Evaluation of diverse taro (Colocasia esculenta) genotypes for higher yield and quality under the Western agroclimatic zone of Tamil Nadu state

Abstract

Taro (Colocasia esculenta) is one of the most valuable food security and climate-resilient crops that sustain many livelihoods in the tropics and subtropics. The study's main objectives were to identify superior taro entries for yield, cooking quality and oxalate content. The experiment was conducted from 2017 to 2018 in randomized block design with fourteen taro genotypes in three replications at Horticultural College and Research Institute, TNAU, Coimbatore. The taro variety CO1 was used as a local check. Significant differences were observed for yield and the highest was observed in TTR 17-8 (21.12 t ha-1) and TTr 17-3 (20.16 t ha-1), TTr 17-7 (19.59 t ha-1), TTr 17-12 (19.74 t ha-1) and CO 1 (20.93 t ha-1) were on par. The number of cormels per plant (16.76), weight of cormels per plant (449.40 g) and total cormel yield (16.80 t ha-1) were also maximum in TTr 17-8. The maximum corm weight was significantly maximum in TTR 17-11 (111.63 g). Among the fourteen entries evaluated the highest organoleptic score (8.88), lowest calcium oxalate content (18.14 mg 100 g-1) and least percent disease incidence of taro leaf blight (25.60 %) were recorded in TTr 17-13, TTr 17-8 and TTr 17-4 respectively. The entries TTr 17-1, TTr 17-3, TTr 17-5, TTr 17-6, TTr 17-7, TTr 17-8, TTr 17-10, TTr 17-11, TTr 17-13 and TTr 17-14 recorded long keeping quality of more than 30 days.