Quality planting material for productivity enhancement in tropical tuber crops

Abstract

Tropical tuber crops assume importance to ensure food security to ever increasing population in our country. They are considered to be climate resilient crops. Tropical tuber crops include cassava, sweet potato, aroids, yams and minor tuber crops. However, inadequate availability of quality planting material (QPM) is a major handicap faced by farmers for productivity enhancement in these crops. The major constraints faced for quality planting material are low multiplication ratio, lack of availability of healthy planting material, longer time for released varieties to reach farmer, high cost of planting material and difficulty in transportation. Hence quality planting material can be produced by minisett technique, vine cutting technology, micropropagation and true seed production. Among this, minisett technique is becoming popular in the coming scenario. Standards for healthy planting material of different tuber crops have been formulated by CTCRI (2017) [9]. By adopting proper technology, it will be able to increase the production of tuber cops to meet the ever-growing population.