How to Grow Yautia

Xanthosoma sagittifolium · Also called: Yautia (cocoyam / tannia), Tannia, New cocoyam, Macabo, Malanga, Ocumo, Taioba, Mangarito

A farmer walking through a cocoyam field on the slopes of Mount Fako in Cameroon, among clumps of large arrow-shaped leaves on thick fleshy stalks, with misty forested hillside behind.

Photo: Amcaja, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Yautia came from tropical America and found its most important home in West Africa, where Cameroon, Nigeria and Ghana grow a great deal of it under the name cocoyam or macabo, and it remains important across the Caribbean and the Pacific. For a smallholder it does three useful things at once: it produces on ground too dry for taro, it grows well in the shade under bananas and cocoa so it costs no extra land, and it gives both a starchy food and an edible leaf from the same plant. It also keeps in the ground, so a family can dig what it needs week by week rather than harvesting everything at once. Its two honest drawbacks are the sharp crystals that make every part of it unpleasant raw, and a soil rot that has badly damaged the crop across West Africa and has no cure.

Growing Yautia, Stage by Stage

1. Get the land ready — Choose deep soil that drains, work it deeply and ridge it, because this crop needs loose ground and hates wet feet.
2. Choose your planting material — Plant side corms or pieces of the main corm from a healthy crop, and reject anything soft or rotten.
3. Plant the setts — Plant into ridges at the start of the rains, shallow, with the bud upward and room to spread.
4. Water — Yautia wants steady moisture through a long season, and unlike taro it will not stand in water.
5. Weed, feed and earth up — Weed while the crop is small, draw soil up the ridges as the corms swell, and feed a crop that is in the ground for a year.
6. Corm growth, and the flowers you can ignore — The work happens underground, and the flower that sometimes appears has almost nothing to do with your crop.
7. Watch for trouble — The root rot is the one that ends fields, and it is fought by hygiene rather than by treatment.
8. Harvest — Lift when the leaves yellow and die back, dig carefully, and remember that the crop will wait in the ground.
9. Cure, store, cook and sell — Dry the skins, store cool and airy, cook it thoroughly, and never taste it raw.

Common Problems & Troubleshooting

If you see: A burning, prickling mouth and throat after eating, or badly itching hands after peeling, sometimes lasting hours.

It likely means: The sharp crystals in the raw plant. They are in the corms, the leaves and the sap, and cooking is what destroys them.

Do this: Never eat any part of this plant raw, and cook corms and leaves thoroughly before they go anywhere near a plate.

If you see: Plants yellowing, wilting and collapsing in patches, with soft brown rotted corms and a sour smell when you lift one, spreading through the field over a season.

It likely means: The root rot of cocoyam. It spreads in wet soil and on tools and boots, it has no cure, and it has badly damaged this crop across large parts of West Africa.

Do this: Lift and destroy affected plants with the soil around them, and never compost them.

If you see: Plenty of large healthy leaves at harvest but only small, few or misshapen side corms underneath.

It likely means: Hard or shallow soil, too little space, too little food over a long season, or the crop lifted before it had finished.

Do this: Work the soil deeply before planting, since corms cannot swell into hard ground.

If you see: Corms that have pushed up out of the soil and gone green and hard on the exposed part.

It likely means: They were not kept covered. A corm exposed to light greens and becomes tough and unpleasant.

Do this: Draw soil up around the base of each clump as the corms swell.

If you see: Stored corms going soft and wet within weeks, sometimes with a sour smell, spreading from one corm to those touching it.

It likely means: They were cut or bruised at lifting, washed before storing, or stored in a heap where air cannot move.

Do this: Dig carefully with a fork so the corms come out whole, since a cut corm cannot be stored.

If you see: A crop planted as cocoyam that is rotting in wet ground, or one whose big central corm is inedible when everyone expected to eat it.

It likely means: Taro and yautia have been confused. They are different plants with opposite needs, and both are called cocoyam in many places.

Do this: Look at the leaf: if the stalk joins the middle of the underside of the blade, it is taro, and if it joins at the notch on the edge, it is yautia.

If you see: Brown or dark water-soaked patches spreading across the leaves in wet weather, sometimes with a pale edge, until the leaves collapse.

It likely means: A leaf disease, which spreads in warm wet weather and in crowded plantings where the leaves stay wet.

Do this: Space the crop properly so that air moves through it rather than planting too thickly.

Yield & Market Value

Growing the crop is only part of the job. The last part is knowing what a normal harvest looks like where you are, and knowing what your corms are worth before you agree a price with anybody.

Remember It This Way

If you forget every other page of this guide, keep these lines. They are the whole crop, in order, short enough to carry in your head.

Never raw. Every part of it burns the mouth until it is cooked.
Gloves or oiled hands before peeling, or your hands will itch for hours.
This is not taro. Yautia wants ground that drains.
The food is the side corms, not the big one in the middle.
Leaf stalk at the notch means yautia. In the middle means taro.
It grows in shade, so put it under bananas or cocoa.
Clean setts only. The root rot has no cure and travels in them.
Earth it up. An exposed corm goes green and hard.
Lift when the leaves yellow, about nine to twelve months.
It waits in the ground. Dig only what you have a buyer for.

Test Yourself: Identification

This looks like taro. How do I tell which of the two I am looking at?

Why is this crop planted on ridges rather than on flat ground?

A pale hooded flower has come up in the middle of the plant. Does it mean anything?

Honest Limits of This Guide

Yautia and taro are counted together in much reporting and are both called cocoyam across West Africa, so production and yield figures for the two are frequently mixed. Any number here is a rough idea of scale only.
Timings are given in months of growth and in seasons rather than in calendar months, because this crop is grown across the tropics on both sides of the equator. Your harvest comes when the leaves yellow and die back.
Very little is registered for use on cocoyam anywhere, because it is a minor crop in most statistics even where it is a major food. This guide therefore concentrates on drainage, clean planting material and tool hygiene, which are what actually control its worst disease.
How long raw corms and leaves must be cooked, and whether the water is changed, differs between dishes and between countries. This guide says to cook thoroughly and never to taste anything raw, and leaves the method to the kitchen that knows it.

Sources

GBIF Backbone Taxonomy species-match record for Xanthosoma sagittifolium (L.) Schott — Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Copenhagen (source)
EPPO Global Database — Xanthosoma sagittifolium (EPPO code XATSA) — European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO), Paris (source)
FAOSTAT crops and livestock products — production data for yautia (cocoyam) and for taro — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome (source)
Xanthosoma sagittifolium (elephant ear, tannia, cocoyam) — CABI Compendium datasheet — CABI, Wallingford (source)

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