Visit of the sweetpotato seed systems community of practice team to NaCRRI

Date: June 14, 2017

Sweetpotato pre-basic (nuclear) seed production at NaCRRI

The National Crops Resources Research Institute (NaCRRI), one of the constituent institutes under the National Agricultural Research Organization of (NARO) of Uganda is implementing the production of early generation seed of sweetpotato. The International Potato Center (CIP) through the Sweetpotato Action for Security and Health in Africa (SASHA) project supports this work.

The objectives of the project are to

1. conduct virus indexing and in-vitro production of planting material;
2. multiply pre-basic and basic seed in the screen house and field
3. build capacity and coordinate production of pre-basic and basic sweetpotato seed.

Presently, virus indexed stocks of popular sweetpotato varieties are being maintained in the tissue culture laboratory at NaCRRI. The visitors will also be able to see the cleaned pre-basic seed being multiplied in the sweetpotato seed multiplication screen house at NaCRRI. We are currently multiplying NASPOT 12O, NASPOT 13O and Dimbuka-Bukulula varieties in the screen house to be transferred to the field site at Abi Zonal Agricultural Research and Development Institute (AbiZARDI) in Arua. Arua is a low sweetpotato virus disease zone, suitable for basic seed production. The project has enhanced the dissemination of virus-indexed sweetpotato planting material especially in the West Nile region where the basic seed multiplication site is located.