Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries, Rural Transformation, Industry & Labour, Saboto Caesar has extended congratulations to the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI) on their research done pertaining to the sweet potato project.
According to a post made via the Agriculture Ministry’s official Facebook page, Minister Caesar said “I wish to congratulate CARDIcaribbean on their research work regarding sweet potatoes in SVG. It has created significant interest in the farming community. My Ministry will continue to advance sweet potatoes as a climate change resilient crop. I wish all stakeholders the very best in the other stages of the research.”
The Ministry of Agriculture also recognized SVG’s Extension and Advisory Services, the Research and Development Unit, the Biotechnology Centre and the Communications Unit within the Ministry of Agriculture, the Agency for Public Information (API) and Farmers for their contributions.
According to CARDI, 19 boxes of sweet potatoes have been shipped from St. Vincent and the Grenadines to Trinidad and Tobago for biochemical analysis and post harvest evaluations.
This activity is part of Component 2 the Caribbean Development Bank Regional Sweet Potato project being implemented by CARDIcaribbean and UWI St. Augustine. The aim of this component is to improve the availability of market preferred climate resilient sweet potato varieties/genotypes and enhance production and processing technology.
The evaluations are being done by the Faculty of Food and Agriculture UWI STA.
The sweet potatoes were harvested from research plots established in agroecological zones across St Vincent. The varieties/genotypes being evaluated are: Jackson, CARDI K847, Big Vine, Rasta and Agriculture.
