The 2011 ASHS Annual Conference

Sweetpotato is playing an increasingly important role in African agriculture, combating food insecurity and undernourishment, particularly vitamin A deficiency. The Sweetpotato for Profit and Health Initiative (SPHI) aims to reposition sweetpotato in African food economies, and improve the lives of 10 million families by 2019. The SPHI works through diverse research and development partnerships and seeks to ensure that women and children benefit from its efforts. The Sweetpotato Action for Security and Health in Africa (SASHA), of SPHI, supports pre-breeding and capacity-building efforts from regional Sweetpotato Support Platforms (SSPs) in Uganda, Mozambique and Ghana.  From these locations, national and regional partners work together breeding for adaptation and quality attributes, selecting and disseminating superior cultivars, and maintaining pathogen-tested germplasm for international distribution.  The SSP for West Africa was established at the CSIR-Crops Research Institute (CRI) in Kumasi, Ghana, in 2010, and is working to develop less sweet genotypes for use in staple foods of West Africa and processed products.  Parental germplasm has been selected for population improvement through recurrent selection, based on quality attributes (largely through literature review) including sugar profile, taste, dry matter content, and on local adaptation.  Selection sites and partners have been identified in 3 regions of Ghana, the Central, Volta and Upper East Regions, where sweetpotato is important, and which vary in agroecology. Selecting genotypes in important production zones allows for strong research-extension linkage and assurance of client-orientation of the breeding effort. Though CRI in Kumasi is not in an important production region, sweetpotato virus disease pressure is high and allows for resistance screening.  Initial trials were conducted to implement an accelerated sweetpotato breeding program which speeds up the selection process by evaluating across locations from the earliest clonal evaluation, allowing for early identification of stable genotypes.  Evaluation of large numbers of genotypes for the recurrent selection effort will be facilitated through the use of near infrared reflectance spectroscopy to measure sugars, starch and carotenoids.  Tissue culture and screenhouse facilities at the CSIR-Crops Research Institute have allowed for assembly of a collection of elite sweetpotato genotypes for use in breeding, as disease-free planting material and for international distribution.