Standardization of spacing for planting seed corms and storage technology in Elephant foot

Elephant foot (Amorphophallus campanulatus L.) locally called zimikand, cultivation is popular in monkey prone areas in low hill conditions of Himachal Pradesh. There are two major problems in its cultivation i.e. optimum spacing as the seed corm size varies from 30 g to 500 g and storage rot caused by Fusarium solani. The experiments were conducted at Krishi Vigyan Kendra Bilaspur farm during 2007–08 and 2008–09 to standardize optimum spacing as per seed corm weight. It was recorded that proper spacing for seed corms of 100g, 100-250g and 250-500g weight were 30 x 30 cm, 45 x 45 cm and 60 x 60 cm, respectively to maintain optimum plant population per hectare and ultimately corm yield. Among five storage methods evaluated at two month interval from January to April, single layer sand bed storage of elephant foot seed corms in well ventilated and airy room was found to be the best method with lowest disease score (26.5%) followed by storage in well ventilated and airy room (27.2%) as compared to soil pit storage (40.3%).