A review on sweet potato with special focus on Hungarian production II : agronomy

Sweet potato [Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.], despite its tropical-subtropical origin, has successfully been grown for centuries also in temperate climate. Regarding the various aspects of agronomy, there are general rules that must be followed irrespective of the site of growing. These include the avoidance of forecrops promoting the accumulation of root-damaging pests and pathogens, as well as those increasing the risk of excessive N release; potassium-stressed nutrient supply; planting spacing in the 100 cm x 30 cm range; irrigation in the first 30-40 days; careful harvesting and post-harvest curing of storage roots, among others. Even these factors, however, must be adjusted to the conditions of the site of growing and, as far as possible, to the cultivars chosen. In our days in Hungary, cultivation methods based on international sweet potato literature or adapted from technologies of other crops of similar requirements are generally in use and continuously modified by individual experiences. The planning of scientifically recognized experiments for establishing site- and cultivar-specific approaches to all aspects of agronomy must consider all this information

A plant breeding approach to eliminate the development of calcium deficiency symptoms in sweet pepper growing

Plants show significant differences regarding the dynamics of the uptake and transport of the nutrients. The results of our experiments gave an explanation of the fact that the Ca2+ uptake and transport ability of pepper is different in each genotype. The Ca2+ requirement of the fruits of certain varieties is significantly higher than the amount the plant itself can take up. The determined selection and the further breeding work aimed to solve this anomaly and enable the safe growing of sweet pepper irrespectively of the CaCO3 level of the soil. The basic goal of our breeding work was to improve the calcium utilization efficiency of the tomato-shaped sweet pepper variety ’PAZ’ which is sensitive to calcium deficiency. Crossing with a suitable partner (Torkál F1) resulted in a hybrid (Tokyo) the Ca2+ uptake, translocation and ecological adaptability of which proved to be far better compared to the free-pollinating variety. Regarding fruit quality, the hybrid did not leg behind the biological and consumers’ values of the parental genotypes

A review on sweet potato with special focus on Hungarian production I : utilization, biology and transplant production

Sweet potato [Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.] is a root crop plant of tropical-subtropical origin which is widely produced in the temperate zone, too. Along with several European countries, it is also grown in Hungary for decades but the increase of its growing area was stimulated by the continuously increasing consumers’ demand in the last couple of years. Despite the available cultivation guides and experiences, yield stability is still not fully solved, growing site- and genotype-specific recommendations are still missing. Due to the lack of severe plant health problems detected until our days, a Pathogen Tested (PT) scheme for the production of sweet potato planting material has not been organized yet. With the increase of the growing area, however, the occurrence of various diseases and even that of leaf and root pests is expected, possibly in a short period. Thus, the stabilization of sweet potato among the cultivated plants in Hungary will require the establishing of a PT scheme for the country’s conditions, as far as possible, under the control of the responsible supervisory organizations