Production of Sweet Potato (Ipomoea Batatus (L) Lam) Polycross Hybrid.

Abstract

A poly-cross nursery was established at the Agriculture Farm of the Papua New Guinea University of Technology to develop the poly-cross hybrids of sweet potato with high yield and superior agronomic characters. Twenty five segregating poly-cross hybrids developed from 20 selected sweet potato parental clones showed high variability in terms of tuber shape, tuber skin colour; tuber flesh colour, yield and yield components. Poly-cross hybrids showed vigorous growth and tuber yield increase ranging from 6.5% to 15.6% with higher tuber biomass ratio compared to parental clones. The hybrids showed significantly higher vine length, tuber number, tuber weight and tuber biomass ratio. However, the average vine weight was significantly higher (p <, 0.01) in case of parental clones compared to the hybrids. About 65% (r = 0.649**) of the yield variability in hybrids were accounted for by the yield in parental clones. The hybrids showed significant positive correlations between tuber weight and tuber biomass ratio (0.39*), tuber weight and tuber number (0.51**), but a very strong negative correlation (-0.89**) between vine weight and tuber biomass ratio.