To encourage larger scale production and consumption of the orange
fleshed sweet potato, training workshopswere held with communities,
schools, crèches, local government departments and NGOs. This created
a demand for high quality virus free planting material of the improved
cultivars, which was not available on large scale in South Africa by
2010. To have a long-term impact on food and nutrition security,
large-scale dissemination of healthy vines of improved cultivars
was needed to improve and sustain orange-fleshed sweet potato production.
Disease-indexed mother plants of all the new cultivars were maintained at the ARC (Allemann et al., 2004). The distribution system
evolved over the years from direct distribution from the ARC to households;
to distribution though community-based nurseries, then through
centralized nurseries and eventually through nursery enterprises.