| dc.description.abstract | Potato is an important food and cash crop whose yield is limited by biotic and abiotic
factors. Of these factors, poor soil fertility and recommendation of nutrients matched with
the respective suitable variety at specific agro ecological zone is rare as the case in the
Taita Hills in Kenya. Thus, this study evaluated various NPK 17:17:17 fertilizer rates of
250, 500 and 750 kg ha-1 with or without cattle manure on four popular potato varieties
(Tigoni, Shangi, Kenya Mpya and Dutch Robjin) for two seasons to establish the suitable
high-yielding climate smart variety and fertilizer rate for the Taita Hills.The varieties
indicated significant difference (p<0.05) in the yields in both seasons.The Shangi
achieved high yields of 22 tons per hectare, compared to Kenya mpya that had the lowest
tuber yield of 12 tons per hectare low. Generally, the potato grown in the long rains season
of March to June performed better than the short rains season crop of October to
December, thus long rains season being more suitable for higher tuber yields. The tuber
yield was significantly different between the seasons (p≤ 0.000), among the varieties (p
≤0.000), among the treatment (p ≤ 0.002) and application of significantly increased the
yields by 2.5 tonnes at 250 kg/ha, 3.4 tonnes at 500 and 4.3 tonnes at 500kg/ha. Shangi
variety generally showed higher yields as compared to the other varieties. Shangi
performed better than Dutch Robjin with about 6000kgha-1
and NPK application of
250kg, 500kg NPK increased the yields of potato by about 2500 and 3400 kg respectively
as compared to no fertilizer. The application of 750kgha-1 NPK plus 7000 kgha-1
of cattle
manure led to higher yield as compared to the application of 7000kgha-1
cattle manure
alone, 250kgha-1
fertilizer alone or no fertilizer respectively. Hence, fertilizer use together
with cattle manure practice is recommended for the Taita hills and Shangi variety is the
most appropriate for the Taita hills | en_US |
