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Background: Tannia is one of the six most important root and tuber crops grown world-wide. Tannia possess good keeping quality compared to other vegetables. The tubers are considered more nutritious than colocasia and potato. But the crop is still under-exploited compared to other tuber crops. Hence the study was undertaken to identify the effect of tillage and nutrition on quality characters of tannia. Methods: A field experiment was conducted at College of Agriculture, Vellayani, Kerala during 2014-15 to study the effect of organic nutrition on quality characters of tannia. The design used was split plot design with four replications. The treatments consisted of tillage and planting methods as main plot treatments (L1- conventional tillage followed by pit system, L2- conventional tillage followed by mound system, L3- deep tillage followed by pit system and L4- deep tillage followed by mound system). The sub plot treatments were combinations of soil conditioners (S1- control, S2- coir pith, S3- rice husk) and two nutrition systems (N1- integrated nutrient management (INM) and N2- organic nutrition). Result: Results of the experiment revealed that the quality characters of tannia was improved by deep tillage to a depth of 30 cm followed by pit system of planting, application of coir pith as soil conditioner @ 500 g plant-1 and organic nutrition (FYM @37.5 t ha-1 + wood ash @ 2 t ha-1).

Tuber crops are the third most important food crops, after cereals and grain legumes. The important tropical tuber crops are cassava, sweet potato, yams, aroids and a few minor tuber crops. There is a wide difference between potential yield and actual yield of tuber crops obtained in farmers’ fields which may be due to genetic as well as soil and environmental factors. Photoperiod, light intensity, temperature and moisture availability are the most important abiotic factors governing the onset of tuber differentiation and rate of tuber bulking. It is necessary to understand the effect of abiotic stress factors on growth and productivity of tuber crops to identify/develop crops/varieties and to evolve appropriate management practices to sustain productivity especially in the context of climate change. Hence, the influence of abiotic stress factors such as solar radiation extremes, temperature extremes, drought, flooding/waterlogging, elevated CO2 concentration and salinity on the tropical tuber crops is dealt with in this chapter.