The project entitled “Novel variety breeding for high-yielding and starch-type sweetpotato and starch quality improvement technology”, jointly accomplished by Tai’an Academy of Agricultural Sciences (TAAS) and SCCB, was awarded the 1st prize of Tai’an Science and Technology Progress Award in 2012. Prof. Peng Zhang and Dr. Jun Yang participated in this project.

The team has bred novel starch-type sweetpotato cultivars with improved traditional breeding method using artificial and natural pollination, together with rapid seedling propagation technology based on tissue culture. They also developed new method of starch quality improvement based on biotechnology. During the project period, 120 different sweetpotato germplasms were introduced and 3 elite sweetpotato cultivars were bred. Cultivars “Thaizhong 6” and “Thaizhong 9” had been approved by Crop Evaluation Committee for New Varieties of Shandong Province in 2010 and 2012, respectively. The new varieties have been disseminated on more than 130,000 hectares, gaining significant economic benefit of more than 100 million Yuan. In this project, one patent for invention was authorized and more than 10 academic papers were published. Three bases for sweetpotato R&D were also established. All of the achievements have significantly improved the industrialization development of sweetpotato in the Huan-Huai and Yellow-river Delta regions.

The accomplishment was jointly granted and supported by Shandong Science and Technology Development Program (2009GG10009033), Tai’an Science & Technology Development Program (20071021), and MOST 863 Project (2009AA10Z102).