The determination and economic analysis of relationships between plant population and yield of main crop potatoes

Abstract

SUMMARYTwo experiments designed to provide data for the estimation of functional relationships, which may be used to determine economically optimum plant populations and planting patterns in Desire'e potatoes, are described. Functional relationships between the number of main stems per acre and yield per acre were estimated from the results of experiment (i). Experiment (ii) investigated the relationship between stem number per tuber and seed tuber weight. ‘Square root’ functions estimated for seed yield and ware yield from the results of Exp. (i) were used to calculate a total Financial Returns curve. This returns curve, together with the Cobb-Douglas function estimated from the results of Exp. (ii), was used to calculate the stem numbers per acre, which would give maximum returns per acre and economically optimum returns in different cost/price situations.