Pre-Planting and Post-Harvest Treatment of Potato with Low-Frequency Pulse Electric Field Suppresses the Development of the Leaf and Tuber Blight

Abstract

Organic potato production deals with a very limited choice of tools to control late blight. One of the alternative ways to protect potato against this disease is a plant immunity stimulation. A study of the effect of pre-planting and post-harvest treatment of five potato cultivars (Sante, Arizona, Aluett, Vektor, and Sarpo Mira) with low-frequency pulse electric field (LF-PEF) on the main yield parameters (total number/weight of tubers, number/weight of marketable tubers) and the level of disease development on artificially inoculated leaves and tuber tissues has been performed in 2020–2021. The pre-planting treatment of seed tubers showed a tendency to reliably increase the number of marketable tubers (10–48%), total weight of tubers (11.4–53.9%), and weight of marketable tubers (13.7–89.3%). The disease development and sporulation intensity on leaves of susceptible cultivars grown from treated tubers was suppressed by 17.1–35.7% and 10.9–30.1%, respectively. The level of disease suppression in tissues of treated tubers varied within 13.4–45.2%, and a decreased sporulation was observed in three of five cultivars. Thus, the LF-PEF treatment represents a promising environmentally friendly tool for organic agriculture to increase potato resistance to the late blight and improve the yield.