The primary purpose of this agreement is to provide clean plants ofsweetpotato cultivars and breeding lines originating from the lsuagcenter programs to the louisiana and U.S. Sweetpotato industries…

This cooperative agreement award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service provides $359,080 to the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center to deliver clean planting materials and related services that benefit the Louisiana and U.S. sweet potato industries. Specifically, under the Plant and Animal Disease, Pest Control, and Animal Care federal grant program (CFDA 10.025), the LSU Agricultural Center will produce over 70,000 vine cuttings for commercial growers, plant approximately 30 acres for root production, and conduct disease testing, therapy breeding, micropropagation, and quality management. The funding also supports economic impact studies and outreach on the value of clean plants. By supplying disease-tested planting materials, this July 2022 to June 2023 cooperative agreement aims to protect U.S. agriculture from economically damaging plant diseases.

The primary purpose of this agreement is to provide clean plants ofsweetpotato cultivars and breeding lines originating from the lsuagcenter programs to the louisiana and U.S. Sweetpotato industries andother stakeholders. Activities at the louisiana center will include: 1)therapy of breeding; 2) diagnostics by biological and PCR testing; 3)maintenance in tissue culture of accessions of cultivars; 4) propagationof nuclear stock of virus-tested tissue cultures; 5) micropropagation oflarge numbers of tissue cultures of major genotypes; 6) production ofgreenhouse foundation plants; 7) conducting economic studies to providedata on value of clean plants; 8) continue to implement components of aquality management system; and 9) extension and outreach on the value ofclean plants. This project will deliver production of over 70,000 vinecuttings for sale to commercial growers and to provide sufficient vinecuttings to plant ~30 acres at sprs for production of storage roots tosell as seed to commercial growers. The sweet potato industry willbenefit from the supply of clean disease-tested planting material forcommercial production.