“…Addressing the seed system challenges requires a closer understanding of and building upon indigenous practices, innovative technologies and working with multi-stakeholder and cross-sectoral approaches (Gurmu et al, 2015;McEwan, 2016;Rajendran et al, 2017). The most widely practiced traditional seed conservation and multiplication practices by smallholder farmers in SSA include growing vines using residual moisture and in flood plains, growing vines under perennial crops such as fruits and enset, taking advantage of the shade to prevent vine desiccation (Gurmu et al, 2015;Mudege et al, 2019), and using volunteer roots that remained in the soil during previous harvests and start sprouting at the onset of the rainy season (McEwan, 2016). Recent efforts by CIP in collaboration with African national agricultural research institutes (NARIs) have focused on developing innovative sweetpotato seed system technologies such as Triple S (storage, sand, and sprouting) for root-based vine multiplication, the use of net tunnels to protect foundation material from insect vectors that spread viruses (Figure 4), sandponics for vine multiplication from pathogen-tested plantlets and irrigated vine multiplication linked to established decentralized vine multipliers.…”