Orange- fleshed Sweetpotato Investment Guide

Abstract

Vitamin A deficiency is one of the most damaging forms of undernourishment. In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), 43 million children under the age of five are vitamin A deficient. Every year, more than 4.8 million children in the region die before the age of five. During the past decade, considerable investments have been made to build the evidence base to show that pro-vitamin A rich, orange-fleshed sweetpotato (OFSP) can be a costeffective means to combat vitamin A deficiency in children under five years of age. OFSP has shown to be an extremely rich source of bio-available pro-vitamin A, which is largely retained when the sweetpotato is boiled, steamed or roasted. Research has demonstrated that young children can meet their daily vitamin A requirements from just one medium-size sweetpotato root. Evidence from research confirms higher adoption rates and greater increases in vitamin A intake among young children and women of reproductive age when agricultural interventions are combined with nutrition and behaviour change communication and market facilitation. Lessons from various projects indicate that the time is ripe to invest in larger programmes that are adequately resourced and are able to realize the potential benefits from OFSP in fighting vitamin A deficiency and hunger. The Reaching Agents of Change (RAC) project, implemented by the International Potato Center (CIP) and Helen Keller International, advocates for increased investment in OFSP to combat vitamin A deficiency among young children and women of reproductive age. RAC also builds the institutional capacity to design and implement gender-sensitive projects to ensure wide access and utilization of OFSP in SSA. Discussions with regional advocates and champions identified a strategic role that regional economic communities and their member states could play in promoting investments in OFSP through agriculture investment plans informed by the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). However, potential investors often raised questions regarding what it would take to invest, how much to invest and how to invest in order to improve food and nutritional security, reduce vitamin A deficiency and increase incomes of rural households. RAC leadership decided to develop the OFSP investment guides to help investors and project implementers dealing with OFSP to answer these questions. The decision tool was developed through an extensive consultative process that included key stakeholders in SSA. In developing the investment guide products, the RAC team first produced a draft, which it presented to the RAC champions and advocates for comments. Later, RAC engaged a high calibre consultant to help repackage the information gathered and produce targeted investment guide products. This package of investment guides comprises three products-an investment guide, an implementation guide and a summary (each with PowerPoint presentations for the online version). The decision tool comes complete with an interactive Excel budget calculator. In working out the ...

The Inheritance of Yield Components and Beta Carotene Content in Sweet Potato

“…Several approaches have been used made to make available orange fleshed sweet potatoes, including introduction of new genotypes and breeding sweet potato for high beta carotene content. The latter can be achieved by making crosses between high beta carotene content genotypes and low or no beta carotene content clones (Stathers et al, 2015). Several mating designs such as the diallel mating designs have been formulated to maximize genetic gains in such crosses.…”

“…Vitamin A plays an important role in immune system functions and in the survival, growth and development of children, adolescent girls and women of reproductive age (Stathers et al, 2013(Stathers et al, , 2015. Vitamin A deficiency can be alleviated in several ways including dietary diversification, fortification, supplementation and bio-fortification (Low et al, 2009;WHO, 2009;Harvest Plus, 2012).…”

Reassessing the Cost-Effectiveness of High-Provitamin A Bananas to Reduce Vitamin A Deficiency in Uganda

“…Given the lack of information about the M9 banana's development costs, program costs were extrapolated by averaging the budget components from a survey of other GM and biofortified food cultivar projects, which at least partially provided financial information. Projects from India (Stein et al, 2007;Bayer et al, 2010), Kenya (Bayer et al, 2010;Levin et al, 2019), the Philippines (Manalo and Ramon, 2007;Bayer et al, 2010), Costa Rica (Bayer et al, 2010), Brazil (Bayer et al, 2010), Uganda (Meenakshi et al, 2007;Davey et al, 2009;Fiedler et al, 2013;Stathers et al, 2015), and South Africa (Bayer et al, 2010) were examined.…”

Untitled

“…VAD can be addressed in different and complementary ways: Taking supplement capsules, eating fortified foods, and adopting long-term, sustainable, food-based approaches where locally produced foods rich in Vitamin A are actively consumed as part of a balanced and diverse diet. Each of these strategies has advantages and shortcomings, which highlights the need for an integrated approach to addressing VAD (Stathers et al, 2015). OFSP is not only a high-energy food but it also contains high levels of beta-carotene, which is converted into Vitamin A in our bodies.…”

“…In most locations across SSA, an area of just 500 m 2 of OFSP crop can provide enough Vitamin A for a family of five each year. Across Africa, sweetpotato is grown mainly by women, and where market linkages are established, it can enhance women's incomes, in addition to serving its nutritional and food security roles (Stathers et al, 2015).…”