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

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.