Abstract
A field experiment was conducted at Haramaya and Hirna during the main cropping season of 2013 to determine the appropriate plant spacing for potato cultivars in relation to physical tuber quality characteristic. The treatments consisted of five seed tuber spacing between ridges and seed tubers (75 cm x 30 cm, 60 cm x 30 cm, 60 cm x 25 cm, 50 cm x 25 cm and 45 cm x 20 cm) and four potato varieties (Bubu, Badhassa, Zemen and Chiro). The experiment was laid out as a randomised complete block design with three replications. All physical quality attributes of potato responded significantly (P < 0.01) for the main effect of variety and spacing. At Haramaya, Bubu had the higher geometric mean diameter (46.76 mm 3 ) and surface area (6958 mm 2 ) of tuber than the other varieties. Tuber sphericity was higher for Bubu (85.28%), Badhasa (86.54%) and Chiro (82.26%). At both locations, wider spacing of 75 cm x 30 cm, 60 cm x 30 cm and 60 cm x 25 cm gave the highest geometric mean diameter and tuber surface area. However, narrow spacing of 45 cm x 20 cm and 50 cm x 25 cm resulted in the higher sphericity of tuber. Keywords : Inter and intra row spacing , Solanum tuberosum L., variety, geometric diameter, sphericity, surface area DOI : 10.7176/JAAS/52-06
Highlights
Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is a crop of major economic importance worldwide
Variety and plant spacing did not interact to influence this parameter at both locations (Appendix Table 1, 2 and 3)
At Hirna, Bubu, Zemen and Chiro had higher geometric mean diameters (50.49, 49.34 and 49.11 mm3, respectively) while Badhasa had the lower (45.83 mm3). This is because of the production of large-sized tubers by Bubu, Zemen and Chiro varieties which resulted in high geometric mean diameter
Summary
Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is a crop of major economic importance worldwide. Physical characteristics of agricultural products are the most important parameter in the design of grading, handling, processing and packaging systems. Among these physical characteristics, mass, volume, projected area, and centre of gravity are the most important ones in the handling systems (Peleg, 1985). Other important parameters are width, length, and thickness (Peleg, 1985). Width, volume, surface area and centre location of mass may be applied in the designing of sorting machinery, in predicting surface needed when applying chemicals, shape factor (sphericity), and yield in the peeling operation (surface area) (Wright et al, 1986). Other characteristics worth of concentration are width, length, and thickness (Mohsenin, 1970; Peleg, 1985). The appearance of fresh agricultural products is a primary criterion in making purchasing decisions (Kays, 1991)
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