Analysis of the genetic diversity of selected East African sweet potato (Ipomea batatas [L.] Lam.) accessions using microsatellite markers

Abstract

Sweet potato (Ipomea batatas [L.] Lam.) is an economically important crop in East Africa chiefly grown by small holder farmers. Sharing of vines for planting is a very common occurrence among these farmers and eventually varieties are given local names, making it hard to trace the original pedigree. It is therefore important to characterise the sweet potato germplasm for purposes of breeding and germplasm conservation. In this study, 68 sweet potato accessions were evaluated for diversity using 12 microsatellite markers. The genetic relationship of the germplasm was evaluated using the Jaccard's coefficient for dissimilarity analysis, unweighted pair group method with arithmetic means (UPGMA) tree and principal component analysis (PCoA) on DARwin software, while summary statistics was done using PowerMarker and Popgene softwares. The polymorphic information content of the markers ranged from 0.1046 for markers J67b and J67 to 0.3671 for marker J1809a, with a mean value of 0.2723. The total number of alleles amplified was 21. The major allele frequency ranged from 0.5882 for marker JB1809a to 0.9412 for markers J67b and J67c. Cluster analysis divided the accessions into four major clusters. Principle component analysis divided the accession into four groups which were different from those by cluster analysis. This study was able to identify several distinct accessions as well as a few possible duplicate accessions that overlapped on the cluster analysis.

Analysis of factors influencing market participation among orange‐fleshed sweet potato smallholder farmers in southern region of Malawi: A case of RTC project

“…Sweet potato ( Ipomea batatas ) is the second most important tuber crop after cassava in Malawi (Chipungu et al., 1999). Due to its propensity to grow in regular drought conditions prevalent in Malawi, its production has significantly expanded in recent years (Chipungu et al., 2017). The crop is progressively emerging as a major contributor to Malawian food basket, especially when maize is scarce or the price is too expensive for farmers with limited resources (Dzanja et al., 2018).…”

“…A wide range of sweet potato cultivars are suitable for different soils and climates. Although common sweet potato varieties grown in the Malawi are white fleshed (Chipungu et al., 2008), orange‐fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) varieties whose flesh color is orange are rich in β‐carotene, a precursor for vitamin A in the human body (Low et al., 2017). Its consumption provides a great opportunity to reduce vitamin A deficiency, a common public health problem among breast feeding mothers and young children in southern Africa (Low et al., 2017; Tanumihardjo et al., 2017).…”