The sweetpotato research programme at the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) Roodeplaat Vegetable and Ornamental Plant Institute (ARC-Roodeplaat) has been operational since the 1950s. The program has contributed to the sweetpotato industry in South Africa in two ways: through breeding of almost all the commercially grown sweetpotato cultivars, and by a scheme for making available virus-tested propagation material. This document is an overview of the programme’s work on orange-fleshed sweetpotato.