ABSTRACT
Sweetpotato in Africa is very important in subsistence farming, especially in areas at high risk for food insecurity. Sweetpotato is a regionally important crop in the southern US, where conditions for growth are most suitable. Nutritionally, sweetpotato roots are high in energy and contain many essential vitamins and minerals. Constraints to sweetpotato production in developing countries are numerous, but it has been shown that investments in research to address problems yield high rates of return. Functionally, and for breeding purposes, meiotic chromosome behavior mimics a regular diploid. Sweetpotato, in almost all traits studied thus far, is characterized by tremendous genetic diversity. Inheritance of traits is most often quantitative with only a few traits controlled by one/two genes. The damage to sweetpotato by all other insect pests combined may exceed that caused by Cylas weevils alone, but no one pest causes as much damage as Cylas weevils. An alternative approach is the use of biotechnological methods to develop insect-resistant sweetpotatoes.
