Effect of Growth Regulator and Chemical Treatment on Dormancy Breaking in Elephant Foot Yam ( Amorphophallus paeoniifolius (Dennst.) Nicolson)

Abstract

Elephant foot yam (Amorphophallus paeoniifolius(Dennst.) Nicolson) is one of the most nutritioustropical tuber crop grown for its starchy corms. It is propagated through both corms and cormels.Availability of quality seed material is the major constraints in elephant foot yam cultivation.Fieldexperiment was conducted at ICAR-Central Tuber Crops Research Institute, Sreekariyam,Thiruvananthapuram,Kerala during 2014 -2015 to find out the effect of growth regulators and chemical treatments onbreaking corm dormancy to induce uniform sprouting and enhance yield in elephant foot yam. Theresults revealed that elephant foot yam corms treated with GA3(200 ppm) resulted in uniform sproutingwith 88.69 % sprouting at 60 days after planting. The growth parameters indicated that maximumplant height (48 cm) and canopy spread (71.10 cm) were recorded in plants raised from corms treatedwith GA3(200) ppm at 90 days after planting. The corm yield data revealed that plants raised fromcorms treated with GA3(200 ppm) produced highest corms yield (10.21 t ha-1) followed by plantsraised from corms treated with IAA (100 ppm) which produced 7.31 tha-1. The corm yield of plantsraised from untreated corm was very low (4.15 tha-1). Plants raised from corms treated with thiourea(0.5%) produced significantly maximum number of corms (10,059 ha-1).