The on-farm performance of more than 150 000 pre-basic potato (Solanum tuberosum) minitubers of 1±10 g was monitored over two years in contrasting environments in Nepal. Average minituber productivity (grams of basic seed produced per minituber planted) was 171 g in the southern plains and 116 g in the hills. Although the performance of minitubers varied between environments, minituber sizes and potato varieties, the overall results clearly indicated that minitubers can be successfully multiplied by small-scale farmers. This technology therefore allows for the highly decentralized production of basic seed which, in turn, will reduce farmers' dependence on an unreliable and costly supply of bulky conventional seed.

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Brinjal is one of the widely grown vegetable with high nutritive value responsive to applied Zn and B in deficient soils. With this background, a pot experiment was conducted at College of Horticulture Farm to study the effect of FYM, zinc and boron on yield and agro-morphological characters of brinjal where two levels of FYM (0 and 5 t ha -1 ), four levels of Zn (Zn0: No Zn, Zn1: 5.0 kg Zn ha -1 as basal, Zn2: 10.0 kg Zn ha -1 as basal and Zn3: 5.0 kg Zn ha -1 as basal + Foliar spray of Zn twice @ 0.5% ZnSO4.7H2O solution) and three levels of B (B0: No B, B1: 1kg B ha -1 and B2: 2 kg B ha -1 ) were applied in factorial completely randomized design. The application of Zn and B significantly influenced the fruit yield and other agro-morphological parameters viz., number of fruits per plant, plant height, fruit diameter and fruit length of brinjal. The highest increase was found with the conjoint application of soil + foliar application of Zn and highest dose of B i.e. 2.0 kg B ha -1 along with FYM. On average, fruit yield of brinjal varied between 0.92 to 1.31 kg pot -1 with a mean value of 1.12 kg pot -1 . Zinc application @ 10.0 kg ha -1 through basal (Zn2) as well as soil + foliar application of Zn (Zn3) significantly enhanced the fruit yield of brinjal over the application of 5.0 kg Zn ha -1 as well as over the control. Application of Zn fertilizers along with FYM enhanced the brinjal fruit yield to the extent of 10-24% over the control under different treatment combinations of Zn (either soil application or through soil plus foliar application), whereas, application of B increased the fruit yield to the tune of 12 to 17% compared to no B application. The interaction between FYM and Zn and well as between FYM and B had also shown significant positive effect towards fruit yield of brinjal.

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