M. Drapal, G. Rossel, B. Heider, P. Fraser
Horticulture Research, 2019
Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas, Lam.) is an important root vegetable in developing countries. After its domestication in Neotropical America, human migration led to the distribution of the sweet potato plant throughout the world. Both leaf and storage root are high in compounds of nutritional value. Yet, the storage roots are of particular value due to their significant content of provitamin A (β-carotene). The breeding effort for elite sweet potato lines led to the reduction of genetic diversity and the potential to improve other traits. The focus of the present study was to assess the metabolic diversity of 27 sweet potato cultivars including landraces and improved varieties. A metabolite profiling approach was optimised for sweet potato leaf and storage root tissue and 130 metabolites identified with three different analysis platforms. The data highlighted a lack of correlation between storage root phenotype and leaf metabolism. Furthermore, the metabolic diversity of storage roots was based on the secondary metabolism, including phenylpropanoids and carotenoids. Three cultivars of three different flesh colouration (yellow, orange and purple) showed a significant difference of the primary metabolism. This data demonstrates the value of metabolite profiling to breeding programs as a means of identifying differences in phenotypes/chemotypes and characterising parental material for future pre-breeding resources.Food crops: Assessing the metabolic diversity of sweet potatoUnderstanding the metabolic variations of different types of sweet potato could help improve their nutritional value. Sweet potato is one of the world’s major food crops but recurrent breeding of high yielding lines is reducing their genetic diversity. A study led by Paul D. Fraser, Royal Holloway University of London, UK, examined the chemical differences between 25 types of sweet potato, including orange and purple varieties. They show that there is little correlation between the chemicals found in the leaves and storage root material and that there are significant differences in metabolism between varieties that produce different pigments in their storage roots. Their findings highlight the importance of metabolite profiling for identifying those varieties that produce the highest levels of starch and health-promoting compounds such as carotenoids.
Cited by 10 publications.
Field of study: Biology