Potato is a very important food and cash crop in Ethiopia, especially in the high and mid altitude areas. It is important to choose and adjust potato cultivars with appropriate population per unit area to get for better yield and quality. This experiment was conducted with the objective to determine appropriate plant spacing for different potato cultivar at Wolaita Sodo during belg cropping season. The experiment was arranged in a Factorial combination of three plant spacing (60 x 30, 75, x 30 and 90x 30 cm), and four potato cultivars (Belete, Gudene, Chala and Local) in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. Results revealed that both the main effect of cultivars and plant spacing significantly (P < 0.05) affected yield and yield components of potato while their interaction is non-significant (P > 0.05) for most of the parameters considered. Days to flowering, days to maturity, plant height, leaf area index, total tuber yield (TTY), average tuber weight per plant, marketable tuber yield (MTY),unmarketable tuber numbers, dry matter content and harvest index were significantly affected by main effect of cultivar and plant spacing. Days to 50% emergency and stem number per hill were influenced only by the main effect cultivar. Whereas, marketable tuber numbers and total tuber numbers were significantly affected by the interaction effects of cultivars and plant spacing .Total tuber yield 34.40 t/ha) and marketable tuber yield (29.31 t/ha) of cultivar Gudene were significantly higher than TTY (23.71 t/ha) and MTY (18.43 t/ha) of Local cultivars. Cultivar Gudene produced 45.08%, 17.96% and 6.6 % more TTY over Local, Chala and Belete respectively. However, the result was statistically in par with cultivar Belete. Cultivar Gudene and Belete produced more than one fold MTY over Local cultivar. Regarding spacing, the highest total tuber and marketable tuber yield recorded from 60cm inter row spacing and the lowest from 90cm and 75cm inter row spacing resulted intermediate yield. Therefore, from this study, it can be concluded Gudane and Belete cultivars at a plant spacing of 60 x 30 cm and 75 x 30 cm resulted in highest marketable tuber yield could be recommended to potato growers in the study.
Effect of inter and intra row spacing on seed tuber yield and yield components of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) at Ofla Woreda, Northern Ethiopia
