In many sub-Saharan African countries, public sector institutions have been mandated to generate income from their research activities. National Agricultural Research Institutes (NARIs) and private sector players in 11 countries launched business plans for early generation sweetpotato seed production in 2015-2016. The business plans include: cost structure and financial analyses …

The flyer highlights the benefits of OFSP which is as a staple food in Nigeria and can serve as an affordable and sustainable source of Vitamin A, especially for vulnerable populations

Vitamin A enriched cereal staple-based food products were made from composite flour of cereals, OFSP and legumes for children 6-24 months age, pre-school children and lactating women using different cooking methods. These same foods can be also consumed by all consumers.

Why developing hybrid breeding populations?Sweetpotato is a highly heterozygous clone hybrid crop and with hybrid breeding populations we achieve (i) yield increase, (ii) ease to stack simple inherited traits such as quality and disease resistance, and (iii) elevated yield stability. Achieving these goals is much more effective by offspring-parent analysis …

Sweetpotato is grown for food and feed and is increasingly becoming an important cash crop for many farmers in sub Saharan Africa. Sweetpotato virus disease (SPVD) is, however, one of the major bottlenecks in the expanded use of sweetpotato because it is devastating and can cause 50 to 90% yield …

Plant parasitic nematodes, especially Meloidogyne species are considered to be the most important nematodes affecting sweet potato production worldwide. In South Africa a 6% loss, South America 15% and West Africa 24% loss is attributed to Meloidogyne spp.(Sasser 1979;Kleynhans,1991). South Africa does not have adequate empirically-based data on damage caused …

Every year, many regions in Madagascar are affected by floods, droughts, frost and locusts. They destroy many crops and increase food and nutrition insecurity. As part of climate-smart agriculture, several projects, NGOs and ministries choose sweetpotato to enhance resilience. Promoting high yielding and nutrient rich crops such as orange-fleshed sweetpotatoes …

The signature focus of the Sweetpotato Support Platform for West Africa, in Ghana, is on quality, specifically developing low sweet varieties for staple, processing, and other uses.

Conventional breeding, is still dependent to a considerable extent on subjective evaluation and empirical selection. The process can be difficult, slow, influenced by the environment, and costly for the economy, as farmers suffer crop losses. Molecular marker assisted breeding (MAS) offers great challenges, opportunities and prospects for conventional scientific breeding, …