Abstract:
Orange fleshed sweet potato is an important food and nutrition security crop in Ethiopia. However, its
productivity is low (8 t ha
-1
) due to the use of low-yielding variety and inappropriate plant spacing., a
field experiment was conducted at Wormait Horticulture research and training center at Bahir Dar
during the 2021 rainy season with the objective of determining the effect of varieties and intra row
spacing on the productivity of the crop. The treatments consisted of three intra row spacing (20, 30 and
40 cm) and four varieties (Alamura, Dilla, Kulfo and Birtukanie). The experiment was laid out ina
Randomized Complete Block Design in a factorial arrangement with three replications. Growth and yield
parameters of sweet potato were collected using standard procedgures and analysied using SAS 9.4. The
results of ANOVA analysis showed that the interaction effect of varieties and intra row spacing had
significantly affected most of the parameters studied except surivavte rate, number of branch per plant
and unmarketable yield which were significantly affected by main effects of varieties and intra row
spacing. Highest (171.7 cm) and lowest (61.5 cm) vine lengths were recorded from treatment combination
of Dilla variety with 40 cm intra row spacing and Kulfo variety with 20 cm intra row spacing,
respectively. The highest number of storage roots per plant (9.2) and storage root length (25.6 cm) were
obtained from the treatment combination of Alamura variety with 30 cm intra row spacing.. Treatment
combination of Birtukanie variety with 30 cm intra row spacing generated the highest marketable yield
(22.8 t ha
-1
), net benefit (397,855.3 ETB ha
-1
) with acceptable MRR (408.4%), which can be
recommended for profitable production of sweet potato in the study area and areas with similar agroecologies.
As
the
study
was
conducted
at
one location for a single season, repetition of the study across
different representative agro-ecologies and seasons is also recommended.