Abstract:
Potato is considered both a staple food and main source of income on the slopes of Mt. Elgon and South western highlands in Uganda. The districts of Kapchorwa, Kween, Mbale and Bukwo in eastern Uganda are estimated to produce over 40% of the national crop. The crop is mainly produced on areas ranging from 0.5ha to 5ha of land using manual methods both at planting and harvesting. Such methods lead to increased losses especially at harvest where hand hoes (40% loss) are used to dig out/lift the potato tubers. Four lifting methods were compared for their efficiency in lifting potato in plots of 12.5 by 10m with 4 replications. The lifting method included hand hoe, ordinary ox-drawn lifter modified from groundnut lifter, Farmer Ox-drawn lifter modified from Cossul plough and tractor drawn single sieve single row potato lifter.