Yield and Grading of Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) as Influenced by Different Mulch Materials

Mulch prevents moisture loss, maintains soil temperature, suppresses weed growth, facilitates microbial growth, prevents soil erosion and compaction; thus, maintains soil fertility. Mulching is recommended in potato production for its soil moisture conservation potentiality. In general, organic mulches like water hyacinth, rice straw, wheat straw and rice husk are widely used as mulch material in potato production. To explore the consequences of using various mulch materials on potato, particularly in yield and grading an experiment was conducted at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka. Five potato varieties viz., Asterix, Lady rosetta, Courage, Diamant and BARI TPS-1 were considered and different treatments were no mulch, water hyacinth, rice straw and rice husk. Randomized complete block design (RCBD) was used to design the experiment and three replications was done to maintain better estimation. Tuber yield and tuber size were measured after harvesting and then grading was done according to the sizes to compare the variations among the treatments. Different potato varieties and/or mulch materials was seen to generate a significant change on maximum yield and quality contributing parameters like marketable yield, seed potato, french fry and chips potato in field condition. Diamant produced the highest amount of tuber, marketable and seed potato yield over other five varieties. On the other hand, Courage showed the highest non-marketable and non-seed tuber production while giving a good amount of chips potato comparing other varieties. Rice straw showed the best performance among the three mulch materials, when comparing tuber yield, marketable yield and seed potato, as opposed to no mulch condition performed better in chips potato production only.