JAKARTA - Professor of the Faculty of Agriculture, Padjadjaran University (Unpad) Prof Agung Karuniawan said that sweet potatoes are known to have many benefits and play an important role in helping to realize national food security. According to him, the characteristics of tubers and chemical content in sweet potatoes show the diversity of appearance of tubers' character and have the potential to become food ingredients and industrial raw materials."Accession of local sweet potatoes that have high yield potential and are in accordance with industrial needs can be developed to increase agroindustri production," said Agung in an official statement Unpad, quoted from Antara, Friday 18 November.Agung stated this in his scientific oration entitled "Increase of Competitiveness of Industrial Standard Materials and National Food Resilience Through Ubi Jalar Accompactation and Environmental Specifics. According to him, the breeding of sweet potatoes adapts widely and specifically to the environment is one of the key factors in increasing the productivity of national sweet potatoes. The protein for breeding of sweet potatoes is being carried out by the Unpad Facultural Agriculture Faculty of Plants and Technology Laboratory with the aim of assembling widespread adapting sweet potatoes varieties and environmental specifics. Agung said that the seeding method needs to cover a number of stages, namely exploration and collection of accession-acceleration of sweet potatoes, characterization and evaluation, study of genetic components, crossover, and yield power tests in several locations. "Eksploration is carried out in the Ciledung area, Sumedang, West Java, which is a center for the production of sweet potatoes with an area of 22 hectares. Through exploration activities obtained 59 accession of sweet potatoes from Cilembu Village, and obtained 122 illegal relatives from the Citatah region," he said.
For this reason, according to him, sweet potatoes also have a strategic role in the agricultural business sector in the country. Because at this time he assessed that the need for sweet potatoes continues to increase, but cannot be met by the production of national sweet potatoes.
"The new superior Varietas that will be released later, both those with broad and specific adaptability, are one of the efforts to improve the competitiveness of industrial raw materials and national food security," he said.
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