From Holiday Staple to Fuel and Food Supplement:
Biotechnology Giving Sweet Potato New Identity
By Jim Shamp
News & Publications Editor
Call them naturally wholesome holiday necessities, sweet potatoes or sweet taters. North Carolina’s state vegetable has always been comfortable as a Thanksgiving pie or as a fluffy counterpoint to a crispy brown-sugar crust at holiday tables nationwide.
As evidenced by its red color, this sweet potato is something besides a dinner staple.
But just because North Carolina is the nation’s number-one producer of sweet potatoes, growing fully 40 percent of the total, don’t take this veggie for granted. Get close enough to it and you’ll find out it’s not a potato, it’s certainly not a yam – and it’s getting a makeover.
Scientists at North Carolina State University are holding this ancient native vegetable up to new light, and they like what they’re seeing. Using the tools of biotechnology, they’re finding new potential for sweet potatoes to make us more healthy, wealthy and possibly even free from the hassles of imported petroleum.
A research team led by Dr. Jon Allen, Dr. Van-Den Truong, and Dr. Masood Butt, a visiting scientist from Pakistan, is studying the medicinal properties that may be found in the Beauregard variety of sweet potato. That’s the one most commonly grown in North Carolina. Digging into its use in Japan as a dietary supplement, they’ve found that the variety could play a role in lowering blood glucose.
Not far away, fellow NC State researchers Dr. Craig Yencho and Dr. Bryon Sosinski are designing industrial sweet potatoes. That means their ideal crop doesn’t have to be uniform, nutritious and pretty. In fact, the high-starch varieties they’re putting out also contain genes from deep-sea bacteria that may speed conversion of the starch to sugar to make ethanol more efficiently.
Yencho and Sosinski have some of their experimental sweet potatoes planted at the university’s Williamsdale Farm Agricultural Extension and Research Facility in Duplin County. The crop grows best in the Coastal Plain’s sandy soil and temperate climate. Johnston, Nash, Wilson, Sampson, Columbus, Wayne, Harnett, Cumberland and Edgecombe counties also produce the root crop.
No matter how you cut it, the good old sweet potato has a lot to offer. It’s low in sodium, high in fiber, free of fat and cholesterol, and packed with minerals and vitamins A, C and E.
Learn more about this delightful holiday treasure from the NC State News Bureau and the school's Sweet Potato Breeding and Genetics Program. Also, see this Wall Street Journal feature.
A rainbow of sweet potatoes line the field at a recent Biofuels Field Day, held at North Carolina State University College of Agriculture & Life Science’s 661-acre Williamsdale Farm near the Duplin County community of Wallace. These strains are being cultivated for their nutritional and processing features, not for taste.