Sweet potato also called batata (Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam) is a perennial food crop of the morning glory family (Convolvulaceae) and widely cultivated as an annual crop in the warmer temperate climates. In Hungary, all new experimental data elucidating various factors of production technology are essential to improve efficiency, especially yield stability. Optimal plant density of sweet potato was shown to be highly dependent on the genotype in previous international studies. Thus, it is important to determine it for the genotypes grown under dosmetic conditions. Our field experiment was conducted at Domaszék, South-East Hungary, on moderately alkaline sandy soil of medium humus, very good phosphorous and good potassium content. The experimental setup was Randomized Complete block design with four repetitions, during the main cropping season of 2017 with the objective of determining the effect of variety and plant spacing on the productivity of the crop. The experiment consisted of four planting spacing setups (80 cm x 20 cm, 80 cm x 30 cm, 100 cm x 20 cm, 100 cm x 30 cm) with the Hungarian certified sweet potato variety ‘Ásotthalmi-12’. The planting was performed on 4th Juny 2017 without ridges and the crop was harvested on 15th October 2017. The highest yield per plant was obtained with the 100 cm x 30 cm setup (0,39 kg) that is the usually recommended density in technology guides. Then calculating the yield data for one hectare, we got different results. The highest storage root yield (13.93 t ha-1) was recorded with the density of 80 cm x 20 cm. Increasing plant density from 3.33 plants m-2 (100 cm x 30 cm) to higher level of 6.25 plants m-2 (80 cm x 20 cm) increased the production of total storage root yield from 13.16 t ha-1 to 13.93 t ha-1. In conclusion, the results of the study have revealed that the highest plant density of 6.25 plants m-2 (80 cm x 20 cm) – despite decreasing the yield per plant - resulted in the production of the highest storage root yields per hectar.

Keywords: sweet potato, batata, experiment, density, tuberous root

field crops and pastures

Presentation: oral