Prof. Peng Zhang, accompanied by his three graduate students (Jun Yang, Huiping Bi and Weijuan Fan) from SCCB, went to Tai’an for harvesting of transgenic sweet potato with the assistance of Senior Agronomist Guiling Liu from Tai’an Academy of Agricultural Sciences (TAAS) on October 19th and 20th, 2009. This is the pioneer study undertaken on sweet potato for the quality improvement of starch by transgenic technology. The successful harvest of the transgenic sweet potato with field evaluation demonstrated a success of the project, which will enhance sweet potato breeding potential and broaden its applications for industries. The harvested transgenic sweet potato plants have improved amylose/amylopectin ratios. This was achieved by the down-regulation of key enzymes in the starch biosynthesis via RNA interference technology. The amylose content of transgenic sweet potato could range from 0 to 70%, offering a novel approach for starch quality improvement in sweet potato. The trait in transgenic plants could also be stably transmitted into their progenies by vegetative propagation. SCCB is planning to make more collaborative researches with TAAS to develop new sweet potato lines by the hybridization between transgenic lines and elite wild-type cultivars. Prof. Peng Zhang and Prof. Ji-An Cao, President of TAAS, discussed the collaborative assignments in the future during the harvesting. The research progress was recently reported by public media such as Xinhua News Agency, Science Times and Tai-An Daily.