In some potato (Solanum tuberosum) grown areas, time between harvesting and planting is shorter than seed dormancy period. In these areas, dormancy breaking is necessary in breeding programs, virus-free seed production and commercial production fields. An experiment was carried out with the objective of evaluating the efficacy of different treatments to break dormancy of potato minitubers of Macaca, with short dormancy, and SMIJ461-1, with long dormancy. The treatments were: control, spraying with ethanol and giberellic acid (10mg L-1), suffocation with carbon disulfate (35mm m-3) for 72h, spraying with giberellic acid (30mg L-1) and suffocation for 72h, immersion with 2-4 chloroethyl phosphonic acid (840mg L-1) for 5s, and temperature cycles of seven days at 4ºC and seven days at 20ºC. The experiment was a factorial (clone x dormancy breaking x grown season) in complete random design with four replications of ten minitubers. Treatment effects varied between clones and grown seasons. The major treatment effect of dormancy breaking was with ‘Macaca’. The highest efficacy of dormancy breaking was with giberellic acid treatments in both clones. The percentage of sprouted minitubers of SMIJ461-1 was lower than Macaca. Additional studies with treatment concentration and application time are necessary with the SMIJ461-1 clone.
Solanum tuberosum; sprouting; seeds
