Title : Effect of carbon sequestration and mechanical tillage on king Jee sweet potato in Nigeria
Abstract:
This Paper evaluated the effects of mechanical tillage practices on king jee potatoes on soil properties, crop growth, diseases, yield, and quality of potatoes. Commercial potato growers are more favorable to intensive tillage practices and the machinery traffic across the field may result in deep soil compaction incompatible with potato root growth, maximum tuber yield, and grade. Therefore, sub-soiling may be necessary to break the soil pan and improve crop growth and yield. .The result shows that the plot of land used for this research was largely made up sandy soil (71.47%), follow by silt (16.12%) and clay (12.41%) . More so, the average alkalinity was 114.00 PPM and the total carbon present in the soil was 1.24 %.The effect of ploughing, harrowing and ridging operations were noticed on the branches of King Jee variety as presented . A geometric growth from week one to week seven was observed. However, The study showed that a significant effect of the tillage operations was observed on the King Jee branches at P < 0.05. This is due to the ability of KJ to tap available nutrients from the tilled land effectively for higher yield performance..Potato producers should be aware of the contrasting results however, they should adopt integrated management of soil and potato crop contributing to the improvement of soil health including cover cropping, crop rotations, soil amendments, and conservation tillage that may enhance crop productivity, system sustainability, system vitality, economic profitability, and environmental quality.A change in the soil organic carbon (SOC) as influenced by tillage is more noticeable under long-term rather than short-term tillage practices. Therefore, long-term tillage experiments established for analyzing tillage effects on crop performance and yield are attractive for additional analysis between tillage treatment SOC status
