Effect of Different Irrigation Levels on the Productivity of Two Sweet Potato Varieties (Ipomoea batata)

Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas, L.) is a crop that despite exhibiting great resistance to pests and little response to the application of fertilizers, water deficit harms the photosynthetic system of the crop by restricting the stomatal opening, therefore, Irrigation becomes an important technique for obtaining greater productivity. Thus, the objective of this article was to evaluate the productivity of two varieties of sweet potato subjected to different amounts of irrigation water. The experiment was conducted at the Nampula Agricultural Station, at the Mozambique Agricultural Research Institute, located in the city of Nampula. The cultivars white and orange pulp were evaluated using three treatments: full irrigation, supplementary irrigation and rainfed. A completely randomized design, was used, with three replications. The results showed significant differences between treatments at p-value ˂0.05. However, the Tukey test showed differences between the means observed in ANOVA where the full irrigation treatment, presented greater fresh matter productivity followed by the supplementary treatment.