Yield Determinants of Some Sweet Potato (Ipomoea batatas L) Clones Using Principal Component Analysis

This study aims to determine the factors influencing the yield of sweet potatoes using the Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Meanwhile, this tool was used to form new set of smaller and mutually independent variables (no longer correlated) based on the research variables which includes Plant Length (PL), Number of Leaves (NL), Number of Shoots (NS), Leaf area (LA), Total Fresh Weight (TFW), Number of Tubers (NT), Fresh Weight of Tuber (FWT), Dry Weight of Tuber (DWT), and Harvest Index (HI). The results showed that the combined effect of TFW, NT, FWT, and DWT, as the main determinants of sweet potatoes yield was 71.048% as indicated by the total variance (cumulative percent of variance). Therefore, treatments in line with these values are important for improved crop yield.