Assistant Director General, ICAR (Horticulture Science), T. Janakiram said the meeting had provided a platform to assess the strength of the participating nations in sweet potato production and bridge the technology gaps in agricultural research. “As a climate-resilient crop that can address malnutrition, sweet potato production assumes significance across the world. In India, though sweet potato production is largely focussed on food and nutritional security, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has initiated efforts to promote value addition of the crop and explore the potential for alternative uses like animal feed and starch production.”Dr. Janakiram said moves were on to create a value chain for sweet potato involving farmer producer organisations. Dr. Mukherjee said the area under sweet potato cultivation in India was declining due to the lack of processing industries. “Many multinational companies have approached the CTCRI for improved crop varieties to tap the export market for fresh, frozen and processed sweet potato products,” she added.

Source: The Hindu June 01, 2018 12:48 UTC