Dataset Information

Performance, Variance Components, and Acceptability of Pro-vitamin A-Biofortified Sweetpotato in Southern Africa and Implications in Future Breeding.

ABSTRACT: In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is a major cause of blindness in children under 5 years. Sweetpotato (Ipomea batatas L.) is widely grown in this region, and pro-vitamin A varieties could help to combat such problems. Fourteen newly introduced orange-fleshed sweetpotato (OFSP) varieties from the International Potato Centre (CIP) and two local checks were evaluated at four environments using a 4 × 4 triple-lattice design for total tuber yield, marketable yield, unmarketable yield, total tuber numbers, marketable tuber numbers, unmarketable tuber numbers, dry matter content, and sensory characteristics on boiled sweetpotato. Since varieties were previously tested intensively by CIP under diverse conditions, the focus of the current study was to determine their acceptability by farmers. Across-environment ANOVA showed highly significant differences (P < 0.001) for environments, genotypes, and genotype × environment interaction (GE) for all traits studied. Variety Cecelia outperformed the rest in three environments. Cecelia, Erica, Ininda, and Lourdes were found to be the top four most stable and high-yielding varieties. Genetic gains of the top four varieties over the preferred local check Mai Chenje ranged from 135 to 184%, and across-environment broad-sense heritability was 60% for tuber yield. Furthermore, farmers accepted the dry matter content (which was >25%) and taste of all the introduced OFSP varieties. Since there was a high acceptability by farmers, introductions from CIP could help improve human nutrition. Despite the appropriate design, the error variance component was the highest for all traits, and proper field plot techniques were proposed in future breeding and testing activities.

SUBMITTER: Gasura E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8446612 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:Background: Sweetpotato and potato are fast-maturing staple crops and widely consumed in low- and middle-income countries. Conventional breeding to biofortify these crops with iron could improve iron intakes. To our knowledge, iron absorption from sweetpotato and potato has not been assessed.Objective: The aim was to assess iron absorption from regular and iron-biofortified orange-fleshed sweetpotato in Malawi and yellow-fleshed potato and iron-biofortified purple-fleshed potato in Peru.Methods: We conducted 2 randomized, multiple-meal studies in generally healthy, iron-depleted women of reproductive age. Malawian women (n = 24) received 400 g regular or biofortified sweetpotato test meals and Peruvian women (n = 35) received 500 g regular or biofortified potato test meals. Women consumed the meals at breakfast for 2 wk and were then crossed over to the other variety. We labeled the test meals with 57Fe or 58Fe and measured cumulative erythrocyte incorporation of the labels 14 d after completion of each test-meal sequence to calculate iron absorption. Iron absorption was compared by paired-sample t tests.Results: The regular and biofortified orange-fleshed sweetpotato test meals contained 0.55 and 0.97 mg Fe/100 g. Geometric mean (95% CI) fractional iron absorption (FIA) was 5.82% (3.79%, 8.95%) and 6.02% (4.51%, 8.05%), respectively (P = 0.81), resulting in 1.9-fold higher total iron absorption (TIA) from biofortified sweetpotato (P < 0.001). The regular and biofortified potato test meals contained 0.33 and 0.69 mg Fe/100 g. FIA was 28.4% (23.5%, 34.2%) from the regular yellow-fleshed and 13.3% (10.6%, 16.6%) from the biofortified purple-fleshed potato meals, respectively (P < 0.001), resulting in no significant difference in TIA (P = 0.88).Conclusions: FIA from regular yellow-fleshed potato was remarkably high, at 28%. Iron absorbed from both potato test meals covered 33% of the daily absorbed iron requirement for women of reproductive age, while the biofortified orange-fleshed sweetpotato test meal covered 18% of this requirement. High polyphenol concentrations were likely the major inhibitors of iron absorption. These trials were registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov as NCT03840031 (Malawi) and NCT04216030 (Peru).

Project description:PurposeIn Uganda, sweetpotato [Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam] is typically a "woman's crop," grown, processed, stored and also mainly consumed by smallholder farmers for food and income. Farmers value sweetpotato for its early maturity, resilience to stresses, and minimal input requirements. However, productivity remains low despite the effort of breeding programs to introduce new varieties. Low uptake of new varieties is partly attributed to previous focus by breeders on agronomic traits and much less on quality traits and the diverse preferences of men and women in sweetpotato value chains.MethodTo address this gap, breeders, food scientists, and social scientists (including gender specialists) systematically mainstreamed gender into the breeding program. This multidisciplinary approach, grounded in examining gender roles and their relationship with varietal and trait preferences, integrated important traits into product profiles.ResultsBuilding on earlier efforts of participatory plant breeding and participatory varietal selection, new interventions showed subtle but important gender differences in preferences. For instance, in a study for the RTBFoods project, women prioritized mealiness, sweetness, firmness and non-fibrous boiled roots. These were further subjected to a rigorous gender analysis using the G+ product profile query tool. The breeding pipelines then incorporated these gender-responsive priority quality traits, prompting the development of standard operating procedures to phenotype these traits.ConclusionFollowing an all-inclusive approach coupled with training of multidisciplinary teams involving food scientists, breeders, biochemists, gender specialists and social scientists, integration into participatory variety selection in Uganda enabled accentuation of women and men's trait preferences, contributing to clearer breeding targets. The research has positioned sweetpotato breeding to better respond to the varying needs and preferences of the users.

Dataset Information

Performance, Variance Components, and Acceptability of Pro-vitamin A-Biofortified Sweetpotato in Southern Africa and Implications in Future Breeding.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets