Morphological characterization of sweet potato cultivars during growth, development and harvesting

A study on the morphological characteristics of fifteen sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas L.) cultivars, cultivated at the field of All India Coordinated Research Project on Tuber Crops, BCKV, Horticulture Research Station, Mandouri was carried out during growth, development, and harvesting stages. The physical parameters such as length (main vine), the number of shoots and leaves per plant during growth and development; tuber characters (skin and flesh colours, shape, weight, length, girth, number and yield per plant) after harvesting were recorded following standard description after 120 days growth period. The cultivars show their per plant tuber yield positively correlated to a number of vegetative characters and more significantly to the tuber weight, tuber girth and number of leaves per plant. The yield of the tuber per plant can also be obtained using the formula, Yield per plant = (Tuber girth* 6.15) + (No. of Leaves per plant*6.02) + (Tuber girth* -88.24) - 65.77.