Abstract
To respond to questions raised about field adaptability of tissue culture derived (TC) cocoyam, a study was conducted to compare TC cocoyam with cocoyam from non-tissue culture (NTC), i.e., vegetatively propagated. Throughout the vegetative cycle, TC plants out performed NTC plants in terms of plant vigor and average leaf number. In general, TC plants acclimatized in the greenhouse produced significantly more suckers than NTC plants, regardless of the period within the growing season. In the trial, the average number of cormels per plant varied from 6.66 to 12.44. TC plants acclimatized for two months (h1), yielded higher than the other TC and TCN plants. The total weight (weight of cormels and corms) of TC plants of h1 was significantly higher than in all other treatments. This finding suggests the importance of the acclimatization process in preparing TC derived plantlets for field conditions.