CROP ROTATION OF SWEET POTATO, CASSAVA, AND GABI WITH LEGUMES AS A CULTURAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Abstract

Mungbean, bushbean, soybean and peanut planted in rotation with sweet potato did not significantly affect the vine length and fresh weight of the vegetative parts of the root crop but increased its marketable and total tuber yield. However, only the plants rotated with mungbean showed a significant increase in yield over the control.
Rotation planting of cassava with leguminous crops did not affect its yield and yield components as well as the agronomic characters studied.
Planting gabi in rotation with peanut significantly increased corm production compared with the mungbean and bushbean treatments. No pronounced effect of the other treatments on yield was noted. The weight of corms per plant and the corm yield per hectare of gabi showed similar response to the treatments while the number of runners per plant and plant height were not significantly affected by the treatments.
Cost and return analysis showed that among the legumes used as rotation crops, peanut yielded the highest combined net return regardless of the root crop used. This manifests that peanut-root crop rotation is the most profitable cropping pattern.