Currently, more than 800 local sweet potato cultivars are being maintained at Papua New Guinea’s national sweet potato germplasm by the National Agriculture Research Institute (NARI) Aiyura Highlands Regional Centre. NARI has partnered with the Global Crop Diversity Trust to source project grants needed to continue this work.
It is now undertaking the Biodiversity for Opportunities, Livelihood and Development project with funding from the Norwegian Development Corporation. The project is focused on regenerating, characterising and preserving the diversity of genes in Papua New Guinea's sweet potato varieties, in the form of true seeds.
The project aims to use at least 500 local varieties from the national different sweet potato germplasm to regenerate more than 200,000 true seeds for new lines of sweet potato. These seeds will make up the inaugural deposits of PNG sweet potato landraces at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault - the world's largest gene bank based in Norway.
Source: postcourier.com.pg
