Evaluation of sweet cassava cultivars on agronomic performance and cooking time depending on harvest season

Abstract

Cassava has a wide genetic diversity with sufficient variability to enable and provide alternatives and improvements for most traits of economic interest. This study aims to evaluate four cultivars of sweet cassava (aipim) about their agronomic performance and the cooking time depending on the harvesting season. The experiment was a split-plot design with cultivars as the main plots and harvest seasons as the subplots, with four replications. Cassava cultivars Oriental, Bark Purple, Santim of Mato Grosso and Yellow Squash were evaluated for the aerial portion production, tuber root production, harvest index, root dry matter, starch content in roots and cooking time. It was observed that climatic variations throughout the harvest period can influence most of the agronomic traits; it is possible to select cultivars that exhibit superior characteristics for the different harvesting seasons suggested; cultivars Bark Purple and Yellow Squash presented the lowest cooking time in all harvesting seasons.