Quantitative Approaches in Adaptation Strategies to Cope with Increased Temperatures Following Climate Change in Potato Crop

Temperatures have a major effect on potato crop growth and yield attributes during the crop growing season. In this study, the SUBSTOR-Potato model was used to simulate the potato crop growth and yield in a sub-tropical region of West Bengal comprising of three districts, namely West Medinipur, Bankura and Birbhum in India. Also, the effect of temperature and planting dates scenario on potato crop growth was evaluated by using 30 years historical weather data of the aforesaid districts. Field experiments were conducted on potato crops of cultivar Kufri Jyoti under two planting dates (10th and 25th of December) and different fertilizer treatments in the years 2013-2014 and 2014-2015, respectively. The statistical results showed the satisfactory performance of the model with an R-2 of 0.82 to 0.98 and d-stat of 0.94 to 0.98 for the year 2013-2014 and an R-2 of 0.89 to 0.98 and d-stat of 0.97 to 0.98 for the year 2014-2015. Evaluation of planting dates with past 30years historical data showed planting dates 20th and 30th of November resulted in average higher yield than planting dates 10th, 25th and 30th of December, respectively, in current climate scenario. Furthermore, the study suggests that amending the planting dates is an effective climate change adaptation strategy for reducing the effect of temperature on the yield of a potato crop in the near future.