Abstract

Sweet potato is one of the root crops grown in the country for food purpose. However, its potential to guarantee food security is under estimated. Kamashi area is one of the districts of Benishangul Gunuz region where sweet potato has been growing. However, planting materials of improved sweet potato varieties are unavailable since no research works are done on sweet potato in the region. In view of that, field experiments were conducted during 2013 and 2014 at Kamashi with the objective to evaluate the performance of different improved sweet potato varieties. Six improved and recommended varieties of sweet potato (Awassa 83, Beletech, Bueteca, 004/616, 004/6-vita, and Tulu) were brought from Awassa Agricultural research center and tried for their adaptation with two local varieties in RCBD with three replications.

The performance evaluation of different varieties was conducted by analyzing data on vegetative growth, and yield. The results revealed that there were significant differences on performance of different sweet potato varieties on number of tubers per plant, tuber fresh weight per plant, root dry weight per plant, root length and yield. No significant difference among varieties on root dry matter content. From all varieties tested the highest yield performance was observed on Awassa 83 sweet potato variety in both testing years (78.93ton ha-1 and 79.26ton ha-1) respectively. However, since the experiment was conducted on one location for two growing seasons, it should be conducted on two different locations to generate more quality data.

Keywords: Sweet potato; Improved variety performance; Research work; Yield