Abstract:
Identification of drought tolerance of 10 local sweet potato clones which are commonly grown in Papua had been carried out in the previous trial, but no drought-tolerant clones was obtained. This study was aimed to determine the effectiveness of the Arbuskula Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF) in increasing the tolerance of sweet potato plants to drought stress. The study was designed using Complete Randomized Design (CRD) with two factors. The first factor was composed of AMF inoculation, namely without inoculation (MO), indigenous AMF inoculation (M1) and the introduced AMF inoculation (M2). The second factor was the soil water content which consisted of 20% (K2) and 80% (K8) of water from field capacity. Each treatment was repeated 4 times. The results showed that drought stress depressed leaf relative water content, fresh and dry root weight, root length, transpiration and water use efficiency in sweet potato plants. AMF inoculation enhanced the adaptation of sweet potato plants to drought stress as indicated by higher values of leaf relative water content, root dry weight, root length, transpiration and water use efficiency as compared to non-AMF plants. There was an interaction between AMF inoculation and drought stress on leaf area, weight of fresh and dry biomass of sweet potato plants. This suggests that the AMF is effective in enhancing the growth of sweet potato plants in water stress conditions. Indigenous AMF was more effective and efficient in improving the adaptation of sweet potato plants to drought.
