EFFECT OF PLANT SPACING AND NUMBER OF TPS PER HILL ON GROWTH, YIELD AND ECONOMIC RETURN OF SEEDLING TUBER DERIVED FROM TRUE POTATO SEED

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted at the research field of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka, during the period from October 2013 to March 2014, to investigate the effect of spacing and number of true potato seed hill' on growth, yield and economic return of seedling tuber production. The experiment comprised two factors. Factor A: Plant spaeing(3); S1 -25cm x 4cm, S2-25cm x 5cm, S3-25cm x 6cm and Factor B: number of TPS hilr 1 (3)viz; P 1 -1 TPS hiw', P2 -2 TPS hiw',P3-3 TPS hilF'.The experiment was laid oud in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. Plant spacing and / or number of TPS hill1 had significant effect on most of the growth and yield contributing characters studied in this experiment. Yield parameters such as number of seedling tuber m 2 gradually decreased with increasing spacing on the other hand, average seedling tuber weight increased with increasing plant spacing. In case of yield 25cm x 5 cm spacing exhibited maximum yield (t hi'). For number of TPS hilF'. 2TPS hill' performed the best performance for the production of maximum yield (t ha'). Among the 45 treatment combination though S 2P, and S,P3 produced the maximum number of seedling tubers m 2 (837) and average weight of seedling tuber (9.73gm), respectively but S 2P2 was the best combination for the production of maximum yield (53.93 t ha .5. It may be concluded that Productivity of view Point 2 TPS hill' at 25cm x Scm spacing was the best both in terms of maximum yield and highest benefit cost ratio.