‘We developed sweet potato flour for bread, akara, pap’

Recently, Potato Farmers Association of Nigeria (POFAN) has been promoting the use of orange-fleshed sweet potato. What has the institute done in the area of sweet potatoes?We have released two varieties of sweet potatoes this year.  As I am speaking with you now, there is this rainbow project that is on orange-fleshed sweet potatoes that […]

Recently, Potato Farmers Association of Nigeria (POFAN) has been promoting the use of orange-fleshed sweet potato. What has the institute done in the area of sweet potatoes?
We have released two varieties of sweet potatoes this year.  As I am speaking with you now, there is this rainbow project that is on orange-fleshed sweet potatoes that is going on. What we have done in this regard to make sure that we multiply it is to select what we call “descentralise vine multiplier.” These are people who are already into sweet potato production. We have selected them because they already know the technology of sweet potato production.
 All what we are doing now, is to empower them with the vines of these newly-released orange-fleshed sweet potatoes. They help us now to produce it, so that by next year, we’ll be going to the various farms of those we have empowered by giving them vines and monetary logistics, to now harvest the vines and push it to farmers.  Within a short space of time, the vines will be relatively available and reachable to every farmer. These are some of the steps we have taken to make sure that these things get to the end users.
But we want the private entrepreneurs to come and collaborate with us. We have developed this technology, we are now waiting for people to come and then help to mass-produce this technology. We are calling on industrialists – people who are into business – to come because no one person can fulfil all that is needed in this regard.
Sweet potato is one of the root and tuber crops that have not received adequate attention from farmers in Nigeria. Do you think it has the economic potentials for farmers to make money from?
Sweet potato is a very good crop; it has lots of potentials unknown to farmers in Nigeria. In fact, it is one of the tropical crops that have the capacity to be planted two or three circles in a year. It has very short harvesting period. When you plant it, within three months, you harvest. Among most of the root and tuber crops, this is the only crop that has that capacity.
People used to run away from sweet potatoes because of its sugary nature, particularly families that are prone to diabetes. But I want to tell you through this medium that it is not all potatoes that are sugary. We have those that are very low in sugar content. We also have those that are very high.
The two varieties we released recently, are orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, which in addition to having other minerals, also have bitter carotene, which is a precursor for vitamin A. Many countries in the world are using it to sort out the problem of vitamin A deficiency among children and women of reproductive ages.
Sweet potatoes as a matter of fact, have a lot of potentials agronomically and even economically. When you plant it, harvest it, you get a reasonable yield if you embark on correct agric practice; you will have a reasonable yield that can give you a lot of money. But the point is that when people produce it, just like any other root and tuber crop, it deteriorates easily after production. It doesn’t store for too long. That is why we have being emphasising value addition.
Today, the National Root Crop Research Institute has been able to develop sweet potato flour which if you like, you can make it in form of pap; if you like, you can make it in any other form you want, and you can use it even as fried cake (Akara) and the rest of them. We have sweet potato bread. People are using it to formulate all forms of food.  In our headquarters we have all these things; we normally demonstrate them during important agric shows in Nigeria. So it is on record that it is not only the tuber that you can boil or fry and eat, you can also add value to it in many ways unknown to most local farmers.
How do we get farmers to know about all these values in orange-fleshed sweet potatoes?
We have the group that goes about, Women in Agriculture in our institute; they are involved in training local women. In fact, we have covered a wide range of the geopolitical zones in Nigeria. Many senators are aware of our training programmes whereby we gather rural women and even men and teach them rudimentary procedure of how to process these things to get the products we are talking about. Empowering them at the end by giving them some of the seed varieties to plant so that they too can become millionaires using sweet potatoes or any other of our mandate crops. So we have a team that is going about. Very soon it will be the turn of some people in Karu Local Government.
As I’m speaking with you now, I am almost concluding arrangement about the training with the Commissioner for Agriculture, Nasarawa State.  We want to select some areas where the rural farmers will be trained so that they will get to know this technology we are talking about and for it to impact positively on their lives, while being engaged in agricultural crop production.