2024 Volume 59 Issue 4 Pages 157-162
To reduce the production costs of sweet potato cultivation, new transplanting method of bent-postured cuttings （BC） using a semi-automatic vegetable transplanter （SVT） was developed in sweet potato. Three types of BC, 300 mm in length, were prepared and investigated feeding-out rates using SVT. As the results showed that BCs by crossing the tip of shoot with the cut-side end were successfully feeded out in high frequency, 88%. Because the width of crossing-type BC was the narrowest compared to other BCs, it is considered that crossing-type BC has become easier to fall out of serving cup of SVT. Cuttings immediately after reaping often broke when bent, but the breakage rate of cuttings left in the shade for about 5 hours was less than 1%. Crossing-type BCs was possible to produced 463 in an hour. To reveal the impact of crossing-type BC, cultivation experiments were conducted using sweet potato cultivar ‘Suzuhokkuri’ and ‘Beniharuka’. The transplanting of crossing-type BCs showed higher tuber yield than conventional system, transplanting of straight cuttings, in ‘Suzuhokkuri’, however such advantage was not shown in ‘Beniharuka’.
