Abstract: The main four planting areas of potato in China were selected, and the effects of climate change on potato potential production and yield gap were analyzed based on meteorological data from 1981 to 2010 and potato production,by using the stepwise correction method. The results showed that the light-temperature potential production of potato was the highest in the northern single-crop zone, followed by the central double-crop zone and southwestern mix-cropping zone, which were close to each other, and the light-temperature potential production in the southern two cropping areas was the lowest. The light-temperature potential production showed no significant decreasing trend in northern single-crop zone and the central double-crop zone, showed a significant increasing trend in southwestern mix-cropping zone, and showed no significant increasing trend in the southern second cropping zone. The climatic potential production （rain-fed yield） in the northern single-crop zone, the central double-crop zone and southwestern mix-cropping zone was nearly equal, while that of the southern second cropping zone was lower, and the four regions all showed a significant downward trend. The difference of light-temperature and climatic potato yield was highest in the northern single-crop zone, followed by central double-crop zone and southwest mixed cropping zone, and lowest in southern second cropping area. Rain was the main limiting factor to reduce the yield gap in northern cropping zone, and the yield of potato in other regions also had great advancement by increasing the irrigation amount. Yield gap between climatic productivity and actual productivity in single-crop zone and southwestern mix-cropping zone were close to each other, followed by the central double-crop zone, and lowest in southern double-crop zone. The upper limit of climatic production had not been reached in northern single-crop zone and southwestern mixed cropping zone. In rain-fed agricultural zone, other managements measure could be adopted to increase the actual yield and reduce the yield gap besides irrigation. The yield gap between the climatic and actual yield in the central double-crop and the southern double-crop was lower than 0, indicating that the actual yield in these two regions had reached or even exceeded the upper limit of climatic production. In these regions, other management measures had little effect on the increase of yield under the rain-fed condition except irrigation.

Key words: light-temperature potential productivity, climatic potential productivity, potato, climate change, yield gap