Weevils damage large proportions of sweetpotato harvests  in Sub-Saharan Africa and induce the accumulation of toxic compounds in the healthy-looking parts of damaged storage roots. Through biotechnology, we are working on two strategies that will eventually be combined into widely-cultivated sweetpotato varieties.

Through biotechnology, we have introduced new genes that produce anti-weevil proteins in the sweetpotato storage root. In parallel, we are testing a new strategy to weaken specific genes of the weevils to block their development. These two strategies will eventually be combined into widely-cultivated sweetpotato varieties in SSA.

With conventional breeding, thousands of genes are shuffled and recombined to obtain a desired trait. In comparison, modern biotechnology adds as little as one single gene to provide the desired trait to an existing well-performing variety. As a result, the level of genetic modification is only a tiny fraction of that produced through conventional breeding.

Annual Sweetpotato Speedbreeders’ meetings are held to learn the latest methods and share findings. The scope of the Breeding CoP group is being expanded to include more research concerning marker-assisted breeding and sweetpotato genomics.

There are sweetpotato support platforms that backstop national program breeders in 14 SSA countries and co-supervise PhD candidate breeders. Annual Sweetpotato Speedbreeders’ meetings are held to learn the latest methods and share findings. The scope of the Breeding CoP group is being expanded to include more research concerning marker-assisted breeding and sweetpotato genomics.

Developments in genomics, which involves high-throughput DNA sequencing coupled to new analytical tools to identify genes associated with key traits, promise to make sweetpotato breeding much more efficient.

Sweetpotato is a hexaploid crop with two non-homologous ancestral genomes hypothesized. Knowledge of genome sequences is indispensable for basic biological research and long-term crop improvement. However, the polyploidy and the high degree of heterozygosity of the sweetpotato genome make it infeasible for whole genome sequencing.

As an alternative, we are in the process of generating high-quality genome sequences of diploid and highly homozygous accessions of Ipomea trifida and I. triloba, the two closest wild relatives and putative wild ancestors of the cultivated sweetpotato. The resulting two high-quality draft genomes will serve as references for cultivated sweetpotato and as the foundation for next generation breeding technologies for sweetpotato improvement.