Sweetpotato and potato are expanding faster than any other food crops in sub-Saharan Africa. There is growing investment in research to address bottlenecks in value chains concerning these two crops, and growing interest from the private sector in investing in them. This book addresses five major themes on sweetpotato and potato: policies for germplasm exchange, food security and trade in Africa; seed systems; breeding and disease management; post-harvest management, processing technologies and marketing systems; nutritional value and changing behaviours.

ELISA tests were conduced for APMoV, PLRV, PMTV, PVY and PVX.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book provides a fresh, updated and science-based perspective on the current status and prospects of the diverse array of topics related to the potato, and was written by distinguished scientists with hands-on global experience in research aspects related to potato. The potato is the third most important global food crop in terms of consumption. Being the only vegetatively propagated species among the world’s main five staple crops creates both issues and opportunities for the potato: on the one hand, this constrains the speed of its geographic expansion and its options for international commercialization and distribution when compared with commodity crops such as maize, wheat or rice. On the other, it provides an effective insulation against speculation and unforeseen spikes in commodity prices, since the potato does not represent a good traded on global markets. These two factors highlight the underappreciated and underrated role of the potato as a dependable nutrition security crop, one that can mitigate turmoil in world food supply and demand and political instability in some developing countries. Increasingly, the global role of the potato has expanded from a profitable crop in developing countries to a crop providing income and nutrition security in developing ones. This book will appeal to academics and students of crop sciences, but also policy makers and other stakeholders involved in the potato and its contribution to humankind’s food security.

The potato has the potential to raise smallholder income and improve food security in Eastern Africa. While improving the quality of seed potatoes can contribute to increasing its productivity, most farmers largely rely on the seed potatoes they save themselves. Seed potato system interventions need to address the quality of specially multiplied and farm-saved seed potatoes simultaneously. This book shows that positive selectionthe selection of healthy looking mother plants for the production of seed potatoes by aware potato farmerscan contribute to improving seed potato quality and the quality of the subsequent harvest.