Climate change: Challenge for potato production in South-East Europe

Abstract

Climate change is one of the most serious problems facing the world today. Agriculture is highly sensitive to climate and climate change could have negative impacts on production of many crops and vegetables, including potato. The predictions are that the special climate impact will have the increased concentration of atmospheric CO2, the level of mean temperature, distribution of precipitation, and number and frequency of extreme weather events. In presented chapter, we review the impacts of climate change on potato as the most important vegetable in a South East European region. Increased agricultural drought is one of the most important consequences of climate change in South East European region. Although drought is not as severe and long as in Mediterranean, agricultural drought in the most countries of South East European region could be more serious because of rising temperature and falling rainfall during summer period. During summer period growth and productivity of a lot of agricultural plants, including potato, are in the most sensitive phase to drought. The special emphases in this chapter were done on the effects of drought on potato. This is of special importance because for many potato cultivars even short periods of drought stress can cause significant reductions in tuber yield and quality and thus, irrigation is required for production of high potato yield. However, the South East European region is facing with the water scarcity and increased competitions for water resources between different sectors (agriculture, industry or domestic consumption). The increase of water use efficiency of agricultural crops and saving of water resources are becoming of strategic importance for the whole region. Furthermore, contamination of water for irrigation is also current problem in the whole region. In presented chapter the aspects of water scarcity and contamination of water for irrigation in the South East European region will be reviewed as well as the possibility to save water for irrigation of potato using deficit irrigation strategies. The chapter also aims to provide an overview of the efforts made to produce potato genotypes resistant to abiotic stresses. In addition, the focus will be also on stress-related genes responsible for specific potato traits promoting stress resistance and identification of molecular markers.