The purple sweet potato industry has great potential, and Ma Daifu is optimistic about its development prospects
In response to the development issues of the purple sweet potato industry, a reporter recently interviewed Ma Daifu, chief scientist of the National Sweet Potato Industry Technology System and director of the Sweet Potato Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
Reporter: What is the current status of China's sweet potato industry development?
Ma Daifu: China is the world's largest sweet potato planting and producing country. In recent years, the sweet potato consumption structure has continued to develop toward a trend of a decreasing proportion for feed use and a gradually increasing proportion for fresh consumption and processing use. Overall, the national sweet potato planting area is still mainly based on the starch type, while the planting area of fresh-eating varieties and purple sweet potato varieties has clearly expanded. Within the main sweet potato production regions, driven by leading enterprises and large growers, large-scale and specialized seedling cultivation and large-area organized production have become mainstream, and contract farming is welcomed by both planting farmers and enterprises at the same time, with intensive planting area accounting for about 70% of the total planting area.
China's sweet potato industry still has a certain gap compared with developed countries: although the bred sweet potato varieties have a relatively large advantage in yield level, their specialization is not strong; in terms of cultivation technology, the degree of full-process mechanization in sweet potato production, the level of large-scale seedling cultivation, and the degree of standardization in field production are all relatively low; in sweet potato pest and disease control, there is excessive reliance on chemical pesticides, resulting in relatively high production costs.
Reporter: As a category of sweet potato, how has the purple sweet potato developed in recent years?
Ma Daifu: In addition to containing large amounts of starch, soluble sugars, multiple vitamins and multiple amino acids found in ordinary sweet potatoes, purple sweet potatoes are also rich in anthocyanins and selenium, which have special health-care functions, and have health-care functions such as promoting bowel movements, preventing cancer, resisting aging, lowering blood pressure, and preventing arteriosclerosis. With the enhancement of people's health awareness, in recent years China's purple sweet potato planting and processing have developed relatively quickly, and according to our survey statistics, they account for about 10% of the total planting area. Purple sweet potatoes have more advantages in eating and processing, and the prices of fresh tubers and processed products can generally be equivalent to 3 to 5 times those of ordinary sweet potatoes and their processed products.
Reporter: In the future, what will be the direction of China's sweet potato industry development?
Ma Daifu: In the future, the main direction of China's sweet potato industry development is to moderately expand the planting scale and area, increase per-unit yield and planting benefits, increase total output and output value, and meet the needs of the market and the processing industry. This requires us to strive to achieve full-process mechanization of sweet potato planting, increase the planting proportion of high-quality fresh-eating sweet potatoes, moderately develop the planting area of edible-type and processing-type purple sweet potatoes, expand the level of intensive and standardized planting of starch-type sweet potatoes, develop new types of sweet potato processed products and improve product grades, establish relatively complete circulation channels, and explore ways to develop and utilize marginal land such as coastal tidal flats to develop the bioenergy industry.