The Development of Breeder-Friendly Genomic Tools for Sub-Saharan Sweetpotato Variety Development - What’s needed and how do we get there?

Sweetpotato is a widely recognized food security and cash crop with highly recognized potential to alleviate hunger, vitamin A deficiency, and poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It is also a crop predominantly grown in small plot holdings by poor women farmers across SSA. The Genomic Tools for Sweetpotato (GT4SP) Improvement Project is working to develop modern genomic, genetic, and bioinformatics tools to facilitate sweetpotato improvement. Our goal is to developing a set of “next generation” breeder tools for African sweetpotato breeders. In this talk I will describe the GT4SP project, discuss what we think is needed to achieve our goal and transfer improved varieties to smallholder farmers across SSA.