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»Funding dates
Phase I: 1995-2002
Phase II: 4/1/2002-3/31/2006
Phase III: 9/1/2006-8/31/2010
»The problem
In Africa and worldwide, weevils and virus diseases limit production of sweetpotato. In Uganda and Rwanda, weevils can destroy 60 to 100 percent of the crop.
»The approach
The project links U.S. sweetpotato research programs known for expertise in insect and disease resistance with programs in Uganda and other sub-Saharan countries. In addition to developing weevil and virus resistance, scientists aim to improve yield and agronomic traits and to improve food quality, nutrition, and storability, including developing sweetpotatoes higher in vitamin A.
»The goal
To enable farmers to produce a reliable crop of more nutritious sweetpotatoes year after year.
»Project impact
Sweetpotato (SP) is a staple food in Uganda. Major constraints to increased SP productivity and nutrition include shortage of high quality planting materials, low yielding varieties of low nutritive value (low beta-carotene), market factors, SP virus disease and SP weevil. Pest damage can cause 60-100% crop loss. The sustained support of the McKnight Foundation has resulted into significant advances at program, national research and grass-roots levels.
The research focus of the SP research team in Uganda's National Agricultural Research Organization, led by Dr. Gorrettie Ssemakula, has shifted from production to embrace quality (nutrition) and the environment, resulting in significant and relevant agricultural research. The SP research program is vibrant and robust, currently hosting five full time scientists, six graduate students, and seven technicians working on nutrition, SP weevil and virus resistance, social economics of participatory breeding, morphological- molecular characterization, and conservation. The research team links up with other research scientists and stakeholders from other institutions/organizations globally and farmers to conduct research that targets grass root farmers and other clients. The program has strong partnership with North Carolina State University for genetic studies, the UK's Natural Resources Research Institute for biochemical studies, and the International Potato Center for breeding and molecular marker research. The research team has unraveled the mode of inheritance of SP virus disease, important in the strategy for control of the disease.
End-user benefits can be illustrated with one of the numerous beneficiaries of sweetpotato research such as the family of Mr. Rajab Setyabula in Manyama Village, Zirobwe, in Luwero district in Central Uganda. His family had a small grass-thatched hat in 1997 but had transformed and accumulated assets (e.g. a decent, permanent five-room iron-corrugated roofed house, a cow, ten sheep, and 50 ft x 100 ft plot of land in Zirobwe trading center) and had seven children in school, and $US 980.00, all from sale of sweetpotato vines, roots and products by August 2003.
The SP cultivar, NASPOT1, released in 1999 has spread rapidly in the Lake Victoria Crescent in Central Uganda, where it is variously known as Setyabula or NASPOT at the Kalelwe Market in Kampala, Bwenje along Masaka road where it is rapidly displacing other commercial cultivars, and has crossed to Tanzania where it is locally known as Rumaranjara (famine eliminator) in the Kyaka area of Lake Zone. The OFSP cultivars Ejumula and Kakamega have already reached more than 40 districts in Uganda, although they were only officially released in April 2004, and their dissemination has involved intense promotion efforts by different organizations to combat vitamin A deficiency.
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