Land
preparation
Land preparation is crucial to potato since it provides suitable environment for the growth of both roots and tubers. Proper tillage ensures the proper development of roots as well as helps proper retention and movement of water and nutrients to the roots. Moreover, tillage is also practised to control the weeds as well as to cover the emerging stolons and tubers to prevent them from turning into aerial stems/turning green. The number and type of cultivations that is required for achieving these objectives is the deciding factor. Tillage in case of potato mainly falls into two classes pre planting tillage and post emergence tillage though some workers have introduced two more tillage practices namely initial loosening of the soil and pre emergence tillage. In India and more so in the northern Indo Gangetic plains, the growing season is short and so only two main tillage categories as mentioned above is followed. Land preparation is done using animal drawn implements mostly in the eastern plains where resource poor farmers are present while mechanical power is used in the western and central Indo Gangetic plains where large scale cultivation is adopted.