Release of Six Sweetpotato Cultivars ('NASPOT 1' to 'NASPOT 6') in Uganda

Six sweetpotato breeding lines, ‘NASPOT 1 (‘Namulonge Sweetpotato 1 ), ‘NASPOT 2 , ‘NASPOT 3 , ‘NASPOT 4 , ‘NASPOT 5 , and ‘NASPOT 6 , were approved for release by the Ugandan Plant Variety Release Committee in Feb. 1999. This is the second lot of sweetpotato cultivars to be officially released by the sweetpotato program in Uganda, the first being released in 1995 (Mwanga et al.,2001). All six cultivars have good storage root shapes, high dry matter content, excellent consumer acceptance (Tables 1 and 2), moderate to high levels of field resistance to sweetpotato virus disease (SPVD), and high storage root yields compared to the average national root yield of 4 t·ha (International Potato Center, 1999). The release of these six cultivars provides consumers and farmers with improved quality sweetpotatoes of white, yellow, and orange flesh color.