Growing Seed Yams in the Air: the Agronomic Performance of Two Aeroponics Systems Developed in Ghana

Aeroponics has been perceived as a technology crammed innovation, far out of reach of the ordinary farmer. Apart from its continuous dependency on electrical power, the technology comes with very sophisticated inputs such as solenoid valves, timers, misters, CO2 tanks, and air and water pumps. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the option of using gravity-fed and pressurised aeroponics system for propagating seed yams from vine cuttings. The study was setup at the CSIR–Crops Research Institute in collaboration with the Agricultural Engineering Department of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. The basic advantage of the gravity-fed system is its non-dependency on electrical power, pumps or timers and its ability for continuous production. The two systems were set-up using conventional materials and equipment available on the local market. The treatments were arranged in a split-split-plot design with the two aeroponic units as the main plot, four nutrient concentration levels (C1 - , C2 - , C3 - and C4 -) as the sub plots and vine cuttings from three Dioscorea rotundata varieties (Dente, Pona and Mankrong Pona) as sub-sub plots respectively. Results showed there were significant differences (P<0.05) in minituber weight and days to emergence of planted miniubers. The agronomic response of the two systems in producing mini-tubers was suggestive of the fact that both systems could be used to effectively produce mini-tubers.