This sweetpotato IPPM curriculum gives an insight into sweetpotato variety selection, experimentaion, strengths and weaknesses of farmers’ experiments, an introduction to some the principles of experimental design, planning the FFS experiments, sources of planting material, healthy planting material and dry season preservation of planting material, rapid multiplication technique, soil fertility and plant nutrition, how soils differ, plant nutrition and comparing different nutrient sources, nutrient deficiency symptoms, nitrogen fixing plants, crop development, observing the crop and its environment, presenting and analysing the agroecosystem results, what is damages sweetpotato plants, whether there are natural enemies for insects and pests and what they are, defoliation, leaf damage versus yield loss, defoliation experiment, sweetpotato diseases and how farmers manage them, sources of disease infection, whether disease incidences can be linked to where farmers plant sweetpotato, Sweetpotato virus disease, weeds, when it is a good time to harvest, bartering and yield, yield assessment contests , assessing the total root weight yield and value of the field before harvesting, harvesting the FFS field, Why farmers should store sweetpotato roots, a simple fresh storage technique , adding value to the sweetpotato crop, economic analysis of the sweetpotato enterprise, and sweetpotato cultivation record keeping.
Authors: Tanya Stathers
Subjects: Crop management
Pages: 38
Publisher: International Potato Center
Publication Date: October 07, 2005
Keywords: FFS experiments, IPPM FFS curriculum, learning activities, planting material, soils, Sweetpotato