Throughout the South, the humble
sweet potato is a staple of regional cookery: Baked into
soufflés,
pies and casseroles, it flavors many a meal.

Yet that very distinctive flavor
— its cloyingly sweet taste — also has been a major obstacle
to its expansion as a crop around the world.

Deserted Island Food

“It’s just hard to eat in
significant amounts, day after day,” said UGA horticulture
professor Stanley Kays.

But thanks to research by Kays
and fellow horticulture professor Wayne McLaurin, the sweet
potato
could overcome its own sweet taste to become a major world food
source.

“If you were stranded on
a deserted island and could have just one food to grow, this
would
be the one to pick,” Kays said. “There are just so many
pluses to it. It has an exceptionally high yield, it can be grown
in a wide range of places, and it has tremendous stress
tolerance.”

It’s high in provitamin A and
protein, too, much higher than the traditional white potato.
There’s
just one small problem: Hardly anyone in the world prefers the
flavor of a sweet potato enough to plant and eat it in large
quantities.

Tasting The ‘Veggies’ of Their
Labor

So Kays and McLaurin set out to
breed a non-sweet version of the crop. They began crossing sweet
potato varieties in 1990 in an attempt to waylay the enzyme that
creates such a sweet taste. Eventually they hit on a promising
version that also appeared to be quite resistant to disease.
Along
the way, the two researchers did the bulk of the dirty work in
their study: the tasting.

“Most of the lines were just
dreadful,” Kays said.

But the eventual winner was
virtually
indistinguishable — in flavor, texture and even appearance –
from a plain white potato. Kays said they were lucky to hit a
winner relatively early in the experiments.

“We picked the right
parents,”
he said. “There’s always an element of luck in any breeding
program. You want to pick parents who possess those critical
genes
you need.”

During the years since, Kays has
been testing and talking up the potato among foreign governments
and aid officials, including one recent high-profile UGA visit
to North Korea. Kays soon will be sending propagation material
for the North Koreans to try out — good news for a nation in
the throes of devastating famine, one where the white potato crop
has failed as often as it has succeeded in recent
years.

It Grows Just About
Everywhere

“The sweet potato is really
durable,” Kays said. “It can go through three or four
weeks of bad environmental situations — heavy rain, little rain
— and still make a crop. This has real food security
potential.”

Thanks to McDonalds, the Chinese
people have discovered they like french fries. While sweet
potatoes
can be produced in China for 40 percent less than white potatoes,
only a small percentage is being used for human consumption
because
of its flavor. Kays’ new sweet potato will change
this.

It also could mean good news for
Georgia farmers, who already grow a limited amount of the crop,
but are set to expand production if markets swell.

Kays and McLaurin now plan to
create sweet potatoes with other flavors and traits — based upon
consumer preferences or need. They are interested in creating
an exceptionally high provitamin A sweet potato that could be
used to combat vitamin A deficiency, which results in blindness
for up to 500,000 children around the world each year. Another
possibility is a blander sweet potato that can be added easily
to processed foods to increase their nutritional content and
bulk.

“The white potato is used
in approximately 10,000 kinds of processed foods right now,”
Kays said. “I could see some of these products incorporating
a blend of a new kind of sweet potato instead.”