Given their export potential, especially to the United States and Europe, the Motilonia Research Center of the Colombian Agricultural Research Corporation, Corpoica, is concentrating its efforts on investigating the benefits of sweet potatoes.
Agricultural researcher, Ivan Javier Pastrana Vargas, said the country didn't know much about sweet potatoes, "only that our grandparents used it to make chicha (a moonshine liquor), sweets, jams, and that they ate it fresh. It is a crop that has remained in the culture of the Coast. Four years ago Corpoica presented a research where we evaluated some of the materials we had in the germplasm bank and we selected those that met certain characteristics."
He said sweet potatoes had an orange pulp that was high in carotenes, had a good concentration of antioxidants, and had one of the finest starches among tuberous roots.
"It is a very versatile crop and producers can take advantage of all of its qualities and use all of the plant, from the roots to the leaves, for different things. Corpoica has it as an offer for producers that want to grow it in the future, when we take out the first varieties next year," said Pastrana Vargas.
According to the expert, sweet potatoes are healthier than regular potatoes because they receive no chemical inputs and are produced through integrated crop management or clean agriculture methods.
"Since potatoes have serious pest problems, they subjected to a lot of chemicals, which leaves chemical molecules traces within the roots that they end up ingesting," he said.
One of the advantages of the sweet potato is that the grain of its starch is easily digested by babies who don't have a well developed digestive system and by the elderly who have difficulty digesting carbohydrates. In addition, it can be consumed by diabetics type I and type II, it stimulates milk production in lactating women, and has antioxidant molecules that help prevent the formation of cancer cells.
"Cultivation of sweet potato is an alternative production over other crops for Colombia and especially for the Atlantic Coast, where the species has been maintained through family farming, not only for its qualities but also because of the highly demanding export markets that require it. Additionally the country has areas where it can produce it organically and can achieve a good productivity," the researcher added.
Corpoica has developed research work leading to the creation of varieties that will allow them to deliver the first sweet potato varieties in the near future (first half of 2017) to the farmers in the Caribbean that are interested in producing, sowing, and positioning this crop in international markets. Parallel to this, they also expect to deliver a technological crop management profile, which will contain recommendations for planting dates, fertilization (biofertilization), handling critical crop competition periods, weeds, and planting densities, among other issues.
Source: elpilon.com.co