Increasing productivity of sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas (L) Lam through clonal selection of ideal genotypes from open pollinated seedling population

Understanding interrelationship among various agronomic traits is vital to plan an effective breeding programme in sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas (L) Lam. This study was undertaken at Horticultural Experimental Farm, Indira Gandhi Agricultural University, Raipur, Chhattisgarh to determine association among yield and yield related traits in the crop plant so as to identify the major traits of importance that could be used as bases for clonal selection. The experimental material consisted of thirty three sweet potato genotypes along with one standard check (Sree Ratna) which were replicated thrice in a randomized block design during Rabi 2003–04. The data on vine length, vine weight per plant, total tuber yield per plant, harvest index, biological yield per plant, total tuber yield per hectare, marketable tuber yield per plant, marketable tuber yield per hectare, number of tubers per plant, total soluble solids, tuber length, neck length and diameter of tuber, weevil infested tubers per plant, dry weight of tuber and dry weight of vine were recorded and analyzed to workout the genetic variability, heritability, genetic advance, correlation and path coefficient analysis for all the characters. Correlation coefficient analysis revealed that tuber yield per plant had positive correlation with biological yield per plant, harvest index, marketable tuber yield per plant and diameter of tuber suggesting that selection for component characters may increase the tuber yield of sweet potato. Path coefficient analysis revealed that biological yield per plant and harvest index were important traits influencing tuber yield and could be utilized as election criteria in sweet potato improvement programme for Chhattisgarh plains.