As I have already described before, the Chinese ocumo (Colocasia esculenta L.) is a plant belonging to the Araceae family, it is a succulent herbaceous type, without aerial stem, its leaves come directly from a primary subway corm, which corresponds to the stem of the plant and is where the secondary stems are formed which are the edible ones.
▶ The roots are evenly distributed around the subway stem, producing an edible central corm, ellipsoidal or conical, or a central corm that branches into lateral cormels, which are larger than the central one.
▶ Credits: portal.wiktrop. – [Image of Public Domain]
It is a purely tropical plant, which reaches its best development with periods of 11-12 hours of light, estimates that the ocumo produces good yields in temperatures from 12 to 30 º Celsius, with rainfall of 1,000 to 1,600 mm per year well distributed; requires loamy soils, loamy-clay-sandy.
It is the only root and tuber crop that withstands stagnant humidity and can even be grown under flooding, for experts ocumo is traditionally propagated vegetatively.
For sowing, the corm portions are placed 6-7 cm deep; weed control is carried out during the first six (6) months and harvesting is done 10-12 months after sowing, when the foliage turns yellow and begins to dry out, harvesting is done by hand.
One of the aspects that has not been considered by producers is planting density, an important factor in the yield and quality of the crop. Experts point out that the main sectors involved in the exploitation of this crop are basically small and medium producers who grow it with the perspective of satisfying domestic consumption and in most cases without adequate agronomic management.
NOTE: Reference material.