Yield Performance of Sweetpotato as an Alternative Agriculture Enterprise in Delaware

Sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas) can be a potential alternative agriculture enterprise for underserved producers of limited resources. Also, it is an efficient, drought-tolerant crop to grow in 120 days with respect to yield/unit area in comparison to other crops. Moreover, sweetpotato is a nutritious crop, being rich sources of carbohydrates with precursor of vitamin A, C, and E, and it is fat-free. Therefore, four sweetpotato accessions were evaluated during the 2012, 2013, and 2014  growing seasons at the Delaware State University research center. The specific objectives were: 1) evaluate the adaptability of four sweetpotato accessions under Delaware conditions; and 2) develop an organic production system to grow sweetpotato in response to soil and nutrient management. We conducted the field research on sandy loam soil pH with 6.8 in a randomized complete-block design with four accessions replicated three times.  'Birmingham' (V2) showed the highest yield (34833 kg·ha^-1) followed by TUI-001 (V6) (31847 kg·ha^-1), A-193-217 (V1) (28935 kg·ha^-1), and TI-6008 (V4) (26481 kg·ha^-1), respectively. Without using any chemicals, average storage root yield of all cultivars observed was higher than the US average yield (26223 kg·ha^-1 in 2012 and 27478 kg·ha^-1 in 2013) (NASS, 2013). Results imply that these accessions are of good potential to be evaluated in scaled-up organic production system.