All other things being equal (cultivar, age of the plant, place of cultivation), plants grown at high density produce fewer tubers and have a lower individual yield than those grown at lower density.
▶ This is due to increased competition between plants or between stems of the same plant for light, water and fertilizer when density increases.
Planting density not only influences the number of tubers, but also the distribution of tubers in the different sizes; thus, higher stocking densities generally correspond to higher yields of small and medium size tubers.
The planting density also affects the quality of production, in crops with a low plant density the tubers become too large.
Higher stocking densities can indeed bring about problems of hollow heart, growth cracks and deformed tubers and even second growths.
Plant density greatly affects the multiplication rate, the higher the plant population, the lower the number of stems growing from each mother tuber and the lower the number of tubers growing on each stem; therefore, the number of tubers produced per mother tuber is lower the higher the number of plants per hectare.
