BIONATURE

Sweetpotato has a strong potential to contribute to better nutritional quality to human diets in globs.it has extensive variability among genotypes for important traits such as yield and root flesh colour intensity, which is important to estimate for effective breeding program. The experiment was conducted with augmented bock design that consisted of five blocks per family using botanical seeds sourced from five ploy cross families to select superior genotypes through characterization. Three hundred and thirty four new genotypes were evaluated with replicated varieties in the experiment. The selection of superior genotypes was performed within a family comparing with an average mean of the nearest check varieties within. In this study, some promising orange, white and purple fleshed sweetpotato genotypes were selected from each family based on the traits such as low reaction to sweetpotato virus disease, high yielding capacity, deep orange root flesh colour, deep rooting and early maturity status. In general, a total of 29 orange-fleshed, 14 white-fleshed, and 16 purple-fleshed genotypes that were well characterized have been selected for root yield, sweetpotato disease resistance/tolerance, and quality traits (beta-carotene content) as potential candidates for further sweetpotato breeding programs.