Biotech Updates

Orange Sweet Potato Faces a Bright Future in Africa

November 26, 2010

Orange sweet potato has been a resounding topic in the news lately. This sweet potato produced by HarvestPlus is orange in color because of its vitamin A content. It is extensively promoted to Africa, where children and women are deficient in the micronutrient.

HarvestPlus is currently introducing orange sweet potato through their recent project that targets 24,000 poor rural households in Uganda and Mozambique. Aside from being biofortified, these varieties are also drought tolerant, virus resistant, and high yielding to suit the needs of the growers.

HarvestPlus claims that the biofortified varieties of staple crops that they produce are "no magic bullet, but they may prove to be among the most cost-effective ways to reduce hidden hunger—by using familiar food that people already grow and eat."

Visit http://www.harvestplus.org/content/orange-sweet-potato-faces-bright-future-africa-0 for more information.