EVALUATING SWEETPOTATO SEEDLINGS POPULATION FOR NUMBER OF ROOT YIELD POTENTIAL, ROOT FLESH COLOUR VARIABILITY AND CANOPY ARCHITECTURE

A field study was conducted at the western farm of National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI) Umudike,Umuahia, Abia State in the rainforest of Southeast Nigeria to evaluate the newly developed sweetpotatoseedlings for storage root yield potential, determine the storage root fleshed colour variation and canopyarchitecture of the sweetpotato seedlings. Three thousand seeds from both controlled and diallel mating werecollected from 12 families and raised in poly-bags that measured 4 x 6cm in size. The seedlings were latertransplanted to the field at six leaf stage (that is two months after planting) in polybags at planting distance of 30x100cm for field evaluation. The following data were collected at harvest based on single plant bases: presence ofstorage roots, number of storage roots per plant, flesh colour of storage roots and vine length of each plant.Results obtained indicated that seedlings with high number of large storage roots per plant may be selected ashaving high storage root yield potential. Sweetpotato parents used as females intend to influence their progeniesin certain morphological attributes in terms of flesh root colour characteristics and seedlings discriminated intotypes of storage root flesh colours could be regarded as varieties and as such could be put into different domesticand industrial utilization, while the sweetpotato canopy structure that differentiated the seedlings intoerect/bushy types and spreading types could be incorporated into different farming systems of the people