Morphological Traits of S598A Sweetpotato as an Industrial Starch Crop

Sweetpotato is one of the important starch crops, current more considered as an industrial crop rather than food because it has higher starch content (over 80% of biomass), it is used for bio resources for industrial area. In this study, we generated S598A (a mutant gene of oat phytochrome A) sweetpotato plant using Agrobacterium-transformation method. Morphological characteristics of S598A plant were compared with the wild type sweetpotato, S598A had darker green leaves, increased chlorophyll content higher than to two-fold, delayed leaf senescence, shorter plant height (60% shorter than that of the wild type), more number of leaves and petioles about 1.8-fold, shorter petiole length (30% shorter), 1.2-fold more branches and 1.6-fold thicker stem diameters. From this study, S598A plants with such phenotypic characteristics might be able to use the solar energy efficiently, to have increased tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses and finally to increase productivity (not only starch yield but also root biomass yield). S598A sweetpotato lines are under field trials.