S. Zok et al., FIELD PERFORMANCE OF TISSUE-CULTURE DERIVED COCOYAM [XANTHOSOMA-SAGITTIFOLIUM (L.) SCHOTT], The Journal of agriculture of the University of Puerto Rico, 81(3-4), 1997, pp. 133-139
To respond to questions raised about field adaptability of tissue cult
ure derived (TC) cocoyam, a study was conducted to compare TC cocoyam
with cocoyam from non-tissue culture (NTC), i.e., vegetatively propaga
ted. Throughout the vegetative cycle, TC plants out performed NIC plan
ts in terms of plant vigor and average leaf number. In general,TC plan
ts acclimatized in the greenhouse produced significantly more suckers
than NTC plants, regardless of the period within the growing season. I
n the trial, the average number of cormels per plant varied from 6.66
to 12.44. TC plants acclimatized for two months (h(1)), yielded higher
than the other TC and TCN plants. The total weight (weight of cormels
and corms) of TC plants of h(1), was significantly higher than in all
other treatments. This finding suggests the importance of the acclima
tization process in preparing TC derived plantlets for field condition
s.