WEBINAR: Breeding Sweetpotatoes for industrial and home consumer needs

Join us for a webinar session with Victor Amankwaah on 21/11/2018 4:00 pm Nairobi Time (GMT+03:00). Victor will be presenting results from his research study on “Breeding Sweetpotatoes for industrial and home consumer needs”.

Victor started his career as a national service personnel in 2008 at the Tissue Culture Section in the Biotechnology Unit of CSIR-Crops Research Institute (CRI) in Kumasi, Ghana. After a successful completion of his national service and working on contract for one year at CRI, he enrolled into MSc. Agronomy (Plant Breeding) Program at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). He obtained joint sponsorship from AGRA and SASHA which helped him complete his master’s program successfully in 2012. Right after completion of his MSc., Victor was employed in the Tissue Culture Lab. at CRI where he worked on in vitro production and virus indexing of clean planting materials of sweetpotato genotypes from Ghana and other parts of West Africa in collaboration with CIP, Ghana. In 2015, Victor was awarded a scholarship for PhD studies at North Carolina State University by the Genomic Tools for Sweetpotato Improvement project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. His PhD work focuses on breeding for nutritional quality and QTL analysis in sweetpotato.

Short Summary

Evaluated the TB and BT genetic mapping populations for root chemistry for his PhD dissertation research at NCSU. Field trials were conducted in North Carolina, USA and Ghana for two seasons. Root chemistry analysis was done using freeze-dried samples by near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) at NCSU and Ghana. Phenotype distribution for dry matter content (DMC) and starch content showed normal distribution with many transgressive segregants for these traits. Sugar content was normally distributed as well. Amylase activity in storage root samples was analyzed in the samples of the TB population. Many genotypes showing transgressive segregation were observed in the population. Comparison of nutritional quality of raw and baked sweetpotato storage roots was done to determine the portion of variation of beta carotene, dry matter, starch and sugar content of baked roots that is predictable from raw storage roots. Based on our analyses 48%, 77% and 49% of the variation in baked storage roots for dry matter, β-carotene and total sugars, respectively were predicted by variation in raw storage roots at harvest in the TB mapping population.