Statistical experimental designs were applied to optimize the fermentation medium for exopolysaccharide (EPS) production. Plackett-Burman design was applied to identify the significance of seven medium variables, in which sweet potato and yeast extract were found to be the significant variables for EPS production. Central composite design was applied to evaluate the optimum condition of the sel...

Sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam., is an important food and industrial material crop throughout the world. It is also an alternative source of bio-energy as a raw material for fuel production. China is the biggest sweet potato producer in the world. Biotechnology offers great potential for improving disease, pest and stress resistance and nutritional quality of sweet potato. In the past d...

The enzymatic starch hydrolysis and bioethanol production from a variety of sweet potato developed for bioenergy purposes (K 9807.1) on the basis of its high starch yields, was studied. Drying at 55°C and 95°C of sweet potato neither affected the sugar content nor the starch enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency. Simultaneous saccharification and ethanol fermentations for dry matter ratio of sweet po...

A nationwide survey was performed to investigate the current incidence of viral diseases in Korean sweet potatoes for germplasm and growing fields from 2011 to 2014. A total of 83.8% of the germplasm in Korea was infected with viruses in 2011. Commercial cultivars that were used to supply growing fields were infected at a rate of 62.1% in 2012. Among surveyed viruses, the incidence of five Poty...

A field experiment was conducted in 2009 and 2010 at the Teaching and Research Farm of the University of Agriculture, Makurdi, Benue State, Nigeria. The purpose of the experiment was to investigate the yield and yield components of newly introduced sweet potato varieties under various planting patterns with pigeonpea. Neither fertilizer nor insecticide was applied. This was done in accordance w...

Sweet potato is one of the important crops in China, its growing area and yield rank the first in the world. Sichuan Province has the largest growing area of sweet potatoes in China which amounted to 873,000 ha with total yield of 3,314,000 tons in 2000. Therefore, production of sweet potatoes is of great importance to agricultural production and increase of farmers’ income in this province. Th...

The aim of this work was to research a bioprocess for bioethanol production from raw sweet potato by Saccharomyces cerevisiae at laboratory, pilot and industrial scales. The fermentation mode, inoculum size and pressure from different gases were determined in laboratory. The maximum ethanol concentration, average ethanol productivity rate and yield of ethanol after fermentation in laboratory sc...

The IPO (ipomoelin) gene was isolated from sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas cv Tainung 57) and used as a molecular probe to investigate its regulation by hydrogen peroxide (H(2)O(2)) and nitric oxide (NO) after sweet potato was wounded. The expression of the IPO gene was stimulated by H(2)O(2) whether or not the plant was wounded, but its expression after wounding was totally suppressed by the pre...

Offa Local Government Area is one of the major sweet-potato growing areas of Nigeria. Sweet potato is grown mainly on smallholder farms and concentrated particularly in communities in Offa Local Government Area. This study randomly selected 90 small scale farmers purposively from 9 communities to investigate constraints to production, processing and marketing of sweet-potato. Data were collecte...

BACKGROUND Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L.) is one of the most important consumed crops in many parts of the world because of its economic importance and content of health-promoting phytochemicals. METHODS With the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L.) as our model, we investigated the exogenous effects of three plant-growth regulators methyl jasmonate (MeJA), salicylic acid (SA), and abscisic a...