Taro, Colocasia esculenta (L) Schott., is a staple food for many people in Africa. Despite the numerous importance of the crop, it still remains an underutilized crop in Ghana with little information on many aspects of the crop, especially agronomic practices. This experiment was conducted to identify the effect of planting distance on growth and yield of two promising taro accessions. The experiment was laid out using the split-plot design arranged in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications in which accessions (BL/SM/80 and BL/SM/16) were used as main plots and three planting distances (1 m × 1 m, 1 m × 0.75 m, and 1 m × 0.5 m) as subplots. Data were recorded on the 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, 20th, 24th, and 28th week after planting (WAP) for growth parameters while yield data were taken at harvest. The results indicated that plant height (63.4 cm), petiole length (44.0 cm), number of leaves (4.7), leaf length (31.7 cm), and width (20.5 cm) were significantly ( P ≤ 0.05 ) higher in closely spaced plants than widely spaced plants at 4 WAP and 8 WAP for petiole length (70.3 cm) and in the 28th WAP where there was an accession effect on leaf length and number of suckers/plant. The highest corm yield/plant (0.63 kg) and total corm yield/ha (11.7 t/ha) in both accessions were achieved by the medium plant spacing (1 m × 0.75 m) and lower plant spacing (1 m × 0.5 m), respectively. Accession BS/SM/80 recorded the highest total yield/ha of 13.0 t/ha for 1 m × 0.5 m plant spacing. The higher number of suckers (8.1) was recorded by higher spaced plants. From the study, it was seen that growth parameters correlated significantly and positively with yield. It is therefore recommended that farmers in the area and those in similar production areas use a spacing of 1 m × 0.5 m for optimum growth and yield.

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Rambutan (Nephelium lappaceum L.) is an important exotic fruit from Asia, which is gaining popularity due to its nutritional benefits. The objective of the study was to evaluate the effect of tree age on fruit characteristics, seed emergence and seedling growth of rambutan. The study was conducted at the CSIR-Plant Genetic Resources Research Institute, Bunso, Ghana. Fruits of rambutan were harvested from 8, 10, 25 and 40 years old trees at different locations of the field genebank. For each tree age, three trees were used as replicates. Fruits harvested from trees of different ages were assessed for total fruit weight, pulp weight, pericarp weight, seed weight, percentage seed emergence, seedling plant height and number of leaves at monthly intervals. Fruits harvested from 8, 10, 25 and 40 years old trees did not show significant difference in fruit characteristics and seed emergence. Significant (p<0.05) differences were observed in plant height and number of leaves at 5 and 6 months after emergence, respectively.

Production of high quality seeds depends upon the appropriate time of harvest. In this study, variation in physiological seed quality in relation to maturity stage was assessed in two pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) cultivars (Legon 18 and BAG 14/001) which have different fruit shapes and sizes. Fruits were harvested at four maturity stages (i.e. initially ripe, half ripe, fully ripe and rotten) and seeds extracted after each harvest. Seed quality was assessed by 100-seed weight, seed vigour and germination percentage. The results showed that the seeds extracted at the initially ripe stage had the lowest 100-seed weight in both cultivars. Whereas, seeds extracted at the fully ripe and rotten stages gave higher vigour and germination percentage than those harvested at the initial and half ripe stage in both cultivars. Also, the seeds extracted from Legon 18 had higher viability than BAG 14/001 at all maturity stages.