Plant–Water Relations and Irrigation Management of Potato - The Potato: Botany, Production and Uses - page 103

7 Plant-Water Relations and Irrigation
Management of Potato

David Levy 1 * and Warren K. Coleman 2
1 Institute of Plant Sciences and Genetics in Agriculture, The Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel; 2 Potato Research Centre,
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Fredericton, Canada (retired)

At the start of the 21st century, the world's
population used over 50% of the land's photo-
synthetic products and no less than 75% of the
world's fresh water for agriculture (Rojstazer
et al ., 2001; Araus et al ., 2008; Krausmann
et al ., 2013). This ability is not sustainable, due to
growing population pressures, water resources
degradation, and climate change (Schmidhuber
and Tubiello, 2007; Foley et al ., 2011).
Climate change will affect the production
of crops like potato, which are sensitive to water
shortages. Predicted fluctuations in weather during
the next 50 years include frequent extreme tem-
peratures and increasing drought in a number of
important crop production regions (Gornall et al .,
2010; Jaggard et al ., 2010). These changes will
adversely affect potato production in most coun-
tries, and will lead to significant declines in tuber
production during the 21st century (Hijmans,
2003; Schafleitner, et al ., 2011).
The potato is the third most important food
crop globally (after rice and wheat) in terms of
human consumption and has a high nutritional
value (CIP, 2013). Under rain-fed conditions, po-
tato productivity of dietary energy is greater than
that of wheat, maize, and rice (Renault and Wallender,
2000). However, the potato plant is very suscep-
tible to drought. Drought is an environmental
stress imposed by moisture deficit, leading to the
reduction of water potential and cell turgor below

their optimum values, which leads to disturbances
of physiological processes (Turner and Kramer,
1980). The potato plant requires appropriate water
management practices to secure yield and quality.
This chapter examines how the potato
plant responds to different moisture levels, and
outlines advances in dealing with drought and
water management. Additional information on
plant-water relations can be found in: Kramer
(1983); Taylor et al . (1983); Harris (1992);
Kramer and Boyer (1995); Chaves et al . (2003);
Gopal and Paul Khurana (2006); Haverkort and
MacKerron (2006); Vreugdenhil (2007); Blum
(2010); Turkan (2011); Venkateswarlu et al .
(2011); Yadav et al . (2011); and Aroca (2012).

7.1 Potatoes and Drought

Drought continues to be viewed as the “most
important physiological stress” affecting pota-
toes (Burton, 1981, p. 3). Understanding the po-
tato plant's response to this stress is essential for
developing appropriate solutions (Moffat, 2002;
Araus et al ., 2008; Blum, 2011). Several mech-
anisms involved in coping with drought stress
have been described, such as drought avoidance, or
drought escape, and drought tolerance (Turner and
Kramer, 1980; Chaves et al ., 2003; Schafleitner,
2009; Harb et al ., 2010; Monneveux et al ., 2013).