Community-based multiplication of sweet potato vines and cuttings

Boost Your Yield and Cut Costs with Community-Sourced Sweet Potato Vines.

Community-based multiplication of sweet potato vines and cuttings is a scalable agricultural approach designed to enhance the availability, access, and quality of planting materials for sweet potato cultivation in rural communities. This technology is based on a collaborative effort involving multiple stakeholders and local farmers. By organizing and implementing this approach, communities can address several key challenges related to sweet potato cultivation like enhanced availability and access, quality control, cost reduction, specialized involvement, pest and disease management, timely distribution, and local resource utilization. The technology is a comprehensive approach that is not only addresses the challenges of availability and quality but also contributes to lowering costs, improving crop resilience, and supporting smallholder farmers. It is adaptable to local conditions, making it a valuable technology for rural communities.

This technology is TAAT1 validated.

5•5

Scaling readiness: idea maturity 5/9; level of use 5/9

Adults 18 and over: Positive high

Adult farmers can benefit from increased income by selling high-quality planting materials or improved crop yields from using better-quality vines.

The poor: Positive high

Poor farmers can benefit from the lower prices generated by community-based multiplication systems, making it easier for them to access high-quality vines.

Under 18: Positive medium

It provides young people with job opportunities in agriculture, especially in activities such as vine cultivation, greenhouse management, and the marketing of planting materials.

Women: Positive medium

Women can become key stakeholders in vine multiplication, helping them gain more influence in household and community decision-making.

Climate adaptability: Highly adaptable

The multiplication of drought-tolerant and disease-resistant sweet potato varieties enhances the crop’s adaptability to changing climate conditions, such as erratic rainfall and rising temperatures.

Farmer climate change readiness: Significant improvement

Farmers become better prepared for climate variability by accessing improved planting materials that are more resilient to environmental stresses. This enhances their capacity to maintain productivity under changing climate conditions.

Biodiversity: Positive impact on biodiversity

By multiplying different varieties of sweet potato, including local landraces and hybrids, the technology helps conserve crop biodiversity, which is critical for ecological resilience and long-term food security.

Carbon footprint: A bit less carbon released

Community-based multiplication systems often operate at a local scale, reducing transportation needs for planting materials. This lowers the carbon footprint associated with distribution.

Environmental health: Greatly improves environmental health

The use of disease-resistant sweet potato varieties reduces the reliance on pesticides, promoting healthier ecosystems by minimizing chemical runoff and soil contamination.

Soil quality: Improves soil health and fertility

Certain sweet potato varieties can contribute to improved soil fertility through nitrogen fixation. The technology promotes the use of these varieties, leading to enhanced soil quality and reduced dependence on synthetic fertilizers.

Water use: Much less water used

The technology encourages the use of drought-tolerant sweet potato varieties that require less water, promoting water conservation in areas facing water scarcity.

Problem

Limited availability, access, and quality of sweet potato planting material in rural communities.
Lack of quality control and high retail prices for planting materials.
Challenges in smallholder farmer landscapes with limited infrastructure and market access.
Difficulty in maintaining hybrid and resistant sweet potato varieties.
Vulnerability to pests and diseases.
Limited cost-effective production of planting materials.
Inefficiencies in distributing planting materials to farmers

Solution

Organizing community-based multiplication of sweet potato vines and cuttings at a medium to large scale.
Establishing strong linkages between multipliers and sellers for a reliable and cost-effective supply.
Improving quality control and reducing retail prices.
Enhancing access to quality planting materials.
Engaging specialists for better maintenance of hybrid and resistant varieties.
Protecting against pests and diseases.
Achieving cost savings through economies of scale.
Providing hardened planting materials closer to the fields.
Effective release and maintenance of improved varieties.
Improving distribution at the start of rainy seasons.
Using basic materials found locally for multiplication, including tent-style greenhouses, fertilizers, and disease control agents.

Key points to design your program

Community-based multiplication is a TAAT-validated approach that strengthens rural seed systems by ensuring a local and reliable supply of healthy, disease-free sweet potato vines. The technology addresses recurring planting material shortages that often delay agricultural recovery following droughts and other climate shocks. It is highly suitable for food security, nutrition-sensitive agriculture, climate resilience, and seed system development programs. The technology contributes to SDGs 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 12, and 13. It creates significant income-generating opportunities for women and youth through nursery management, vine multiplication, and local seed enterprises.

To integrate this technology into your project, plan and budget for:

Identify Priority Sweet Potato Production Areas: Target regions affected by recurrent shortages of quality planting materials and climate-related disruptions.
Facilitate Community-Based Vine Multiplication: Support the production and distribution of disease-free sweet potato vines through decentralized community nurseries.
Establish Strategic Partnerships: Collaborate with CIP, national research institutions, extension services, community seed producers, and farmer organizations.
Invest in Nursery Infrastructure: Support the establishment of screen houses, irrigation facilities, and disease-management systems required for vine production.
Promote Nutrition-Sensitive Production Systems: Combine multiplication activities with Orange-Fleshed Sweet Potato (OFSP) varieties to improve food security and nutrition outcomes.
Support Demonstrations and Entrepreneurial Training: Equip nursery operators, farmer groups, and community seed enterprises with skills in vine multiplication, nursery management, and business development.
Promote the Participation of Women and Youth: Facilitate access to seed enterprises, technical training, and income-generating opportunities.
Implement Monitoring, Learning, and Inclusion Activities: Track vine production, distribution volumes, field establishment rates, adoption levels, and participation of women and youth.
Support Sustainable Seed Enterprise Networks: Promote women-led decentralized seed businesses and Training of Trainers (ToT) approaches to ensure long-term availability of quality vines.

10,000 USD

Capital investments for a screen house, irrigation system, fertilizers and disease control agents to set up a sweet potato multiplication site Per 0.4 ha

IP

Open source / open access

Scaling Readiness describes how complete a technology\’s development is and its ability to be scaled. It produces a score that measures a technology\’s readiness along two axes: the level of maturity of the idea itself, and the level to which the technology has been used so far.

Each axis goes from 0 to 9 where 9 is the “ready-to-scale” status. For each technology profile in the e-catalogs we have documented the scaling readiness status from evidence given by the technology providers. The e-catalogs only showcase technologies for which the scaling readiness score is at least 8 for maturity of the idea and 7 for the level of use.

The graph below represents visually the scaling readiness status for this technology, you can see the label of each level by hovering your mouse cursor on the number.

Scaling readiness score of this technology

Maturity of the idea 5 out of 9

Controlled environment: model or early prototype

Level of use 5 out of 9

Common use by projects connected to technology providers

Maturity of the idea										Level of use
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9

Countries with a green colour: Tested & adopted
Countries with a bright green colour: Adopted
Countries with a yellow colour: Tested
Countries with a blue colour: Testing ongoing

Countries where the technology is being tested or has been tested and adopted
Country	Testing ongoing	Tested	Adopted
Kenya	–No ongoing testing	Tested	Adopted
Mozambique	–No ongoing testing	Tested	Adopted

This technology can be used in the colored agro-ecological zones. Any zones shown in white are not suitable for this technology.

Agro-ecological zones where this technology can be used
AEZ	Subtropic - warm	Subtropic - cool	Tropic - warm	Tropic - cool
Arid
Semiarid
Subhumid
Humid

Source: HarvestChoice/IFPRI 2009

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals that are applicable to this technology.

Goal 2: zero hunger

It helps increase crop yields and ensures a stable supply of nutritious food, particularly for communities vulnerable to food insecurity.

Goal 8: decent work and economic growth

The multiplication of sweet potato vines generates employment opportunities for local farmers, seed multipliers, and laborers.

Goal 12: responsible production and consumption

It supports sustainable agricultural production, reducing the need for chemical inputs and enhancing the efficiency of resource use.

These steps are required for effectiveness production of sweet potato planting materials to enhance the availability and quality of planting material in rural communities.

Tissue Culture Production: Public and private sector breeders produce tissue culture plantlets from improved sweet potato varieties within a laboratory.
Cutting into Mother Plants: The tissue culture plantlets are then cut into more than 15 mother plants.
Distribution to Community-Based Multipliers: Community-based multipliers obtain a small number of certified cuttings or seed potatoes from the breeders.
Rooted Cutting and Vine Production: The multipliers use these certified cuttings or seed potatoes to grow rooted cuttings and vines.