ABSTRACT
Basically there are three major ways to utilize sweet potato: as food, feed, or starch production. The utilization pattern of sweet potato varies from country to country. The nutrition index system developed is based on relative nutrient cost, which is defined as cost per unit intake of a given nutrient. Both the relative nutrient cost and commodity nutrition value are dependent on food prices, food pattern, and intake of the respective nutrient, and are thus time and location specific. The nutrition value of vegetables varied from 5.1 of wax gourd to 109 of spinach. Sweet potato vines have the highest nutrition value per unit cost. There are two major constraints to the use of a simple value for expressing the overall nutrition value of a given commodity: First, each nutrient has its own biological function, and is expressed in different units. Second, the importance of a given nutrient is dependent on food pattern.
