Abstract:
Potato is one of the most widely grown vegetable crops in Ethiopia in general and in Koga
Irrigation Scheme of North Mecha District, Amhara Region in particular. Plant spacing and
seed tuber sizes are important agronomic management in the production of potato. However,
farmers did not use the optimum size of seed tuber with required spacing, which contributes to
low yield. Afield experiment which was aims to evaluating the effect of seed tuber size and
intra row spacing on growth and tuber yield of potato at Kudmi kebele of Koga Irrigation
Scheme was conducted during the irrigation season of 2020/2021. The treatments consisted of
four levels of seed tuber sizes in gram (25-50, 50-75, 75-100, 100-125) combined with three
levels of intra row spacing in centimeter (20, 30, and 40) which were laid down in randomized
complete block design with 4x3 factorial arrangement with three replications. Growth and
yield related parameters were collected and analyzed using SAS 9.4 software. The result
indicated that day to 50% flowering, days to 90% maturity, plant height, average tuber
weight, tuber number per hill, total tuber yield, average tuber yield per hill, large and
medium-sized tuber yields were affected by the main factors of seed tuber size and intra-row
spacing. Significant interaction effects were observed on parameters such as stem number per
plant, marketable tuber yield, unmarketable tuber yield, very small-sized and small-sized
yields. The highest marketable tuber yield (28.98 t/ha) was recorded from 75-100g seed tuber
size with 40cm intra row spacing. The marketable tuber yield was positively correlated with
main stem number, plant height, average tuber weight, medium-sized, large-sized and total
tuber yields whereas negatively correlated with very small-sized tuber and unmarketable tuber
yield. Based on the partial budget analysis large tuber size (75-100g) with (40cm) intra row
spacing resulted in the maximum net benefit (219734.7Eth-Birr/ha) with an acceptable level
marginal rate of return (274.13%), whereas the lowest net benefits (115002Eth-Birr/ha) was
obtained from the interaction effect of (25-50g) with (20cm). So that large size seed tubers
could be recommended for economical and agronomical feasible production of potato.
However, the study was limited to one season, location and single variety of high plant vigor.
Therefore, further study over season and location is required to make viable recommendation.