ABSTRACT
I. INTRODUCTION Potato (Solarium tuberosum L.), with an annual production of nearly 300 million metric tons, is one of the major food crops grown in a wide variety of soils and climatic conditions (1). It is the most important dicotyledonous source of human food. It ranks as the fourth major food crop of the world, exceeded only by wheat, rice, and maize (2). The dry matter production of potatoes per unit area exceeds that of wheat, barley, and maize (1). Because of increasing yield per unit area of land, total potato production has increased in both developed and developing countries in the past 40 years. In addition, the rate of production in developing countries has increased significantly more than that of developed countries (3,4). The production figures of potatoes in major producing countries are presented in Table 1. Per capita availability of potato production is highest in Europe, and especially in Eastern Europe, where a large share of total production is fed to livestock (1). The countries of Western Europe, the United States, and Japan have the highest potato yields in the world (3).
