Sweetpotato ('Uala)—Specialty Crop Profile
Sweetpotato has a wide range of uses, including foods, beverages, medicines, ceremonial and household objects, fishing bait, and animal feed.
Foods. Sweetpotato is baked or steamed in jackets in ovens to eat as a carbohydrate. Cooked sweetpotatoes may be peeled, mashed, and mixed with water to form a paste. Raw, peeled sweetpotatoes may be grated and mixed with coconut milk and served as a dessert after wrapping them in leaves and baking. Young leaves growing near the apex of vines are cooked as greens, sometimes in coconut milk.
Beverages. Sweetpotato genotypes having high sugar content in the storage roots may be cooked and then treated and fermented to produce alcoholic beverages.
Medicines. Various parts of the sweetpotato plant and various genotypes may be used as treatments for health conditions or in medical applications such as asthma relief, laxative, induction of vomiting, and as a gargle. Parts of the plant may also be used as components of medicinal mixtures for application or ingestion.
Ceremonial. A nursing Hawaiian mother may wear a sweetpotato vine garland to ensure milk flow.
Households. Old leaves or vines may be used as padding under floor mats.
Fishing. Flesh of the sweetpotato storage roots of certain genotypes may be used as bait for mackerel scad fish at their offshore breeding locations.
Animal feed. Leaves and vines are maintenance food for hogs. The storage roots serve as food for final fattening.
Original source of this article
This article is excerpted by permission of the publisher from
Nelson, S.C., and C.R. Elevitch. 2011. Sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas). In: Elevitch, C.R. (ed.). Specialty Crops for Pacific Island Agroforestry. Permanent Agriculture Resources (PAR), Holualoa, Hawai‘i. © Permanent Agriculture Resources.