IITA IPM project 05: Control sweet potato virus disease in East Africa.

Duration: 3 years (2003 – 2005)

Purpose: To promote strategies to reduce the impact of pests and improve quality and yield from High Potential cropping systems for the benefit of poor people. Specifically, to increase the returns from sweet potato by decreasing both the indirect and the direct ways in which sweet potato virus disease (SPVD) and other pests constrain the productivity of sweet potato in East Africa.

Background/description: Sweet potato virus disease is the most important disease affecting sweet potato in Africa, constraining yield directly but more importantly by restricting the varieties farmers grow to less productive resistant landraces. The project aims to remove these constraints by seeking a better understanding of the bases for adoption of superior resistant varieties, by developing phytosanitation as an additional means of control and by selecting superior, locally adapted cultivars through participatory plant breeding. The work will involve close collaboration with farmer groups so as to ensure outputs can be readily incorporated into farmer field school curricula and similar extension processes

Agroecozone(s) and location(s): Sweet potato production zones in Uganda and Tanzania

Expected outputs: a) SPVD-resistant sweet potato varieties and the key attributes required by farmers and other stakeholders identified through farmer participatory research; b) Phytosanitary (e.g., clean planting material, isolation, roguing) methods of controlling SPVD adapted and validated through farmer participatory research groups in Uganda and Tanzania by March 2004; c) Validated protocols, manuals and materials for control of SPVD and other pests within a sweet potato integrated crop management (ICM) approach and ICM farmer field schools (FFS) developed by March 2005; d) A farmer participatory breeding programme for sweet potato initiated in the environs of Lake Victoria in Uganda by March 2003 and having completed four cycles of farmer selection by March 2005; e) Cadre of trainers in national and regional government and non-government organisations in East Africa skilled in the knowledge of SPVD control within ICM.

Potential impact and beneficiaries: NARS in East Africa, sweetpotato producers in the project target zone.

Partners: NARES in East Africa.

Development investor(s): United Kingdom Department for International DfID

IITA contact person(s)/principal investigator(s): James Legg J.Legg@cgiar.org website http://www.iita.org