Hot on the heels of the successful launch of the Viazi Vitamu app to regional growers of sweet potato, the JKUAT project team carried out a registration exercise to capture geo-referenced information on individual sweet potato vine multipliers.
The exercise took the form of an extended field trip, covering all the major sweet potato growing areas in the Western region of Kenya, with specific sites mapped in Bungoma, Kakamega, Siaya and Vihiga counties, respectively.
At each site, the team visited the growers’ fields, collected GPS location data, conducted a formal interview of the grower and garnered descriptive information of the farm, including a qualitative inventory of the varieties in their collections.
Suitably qualified growers were then registered on the app, with pertinent details uploaded on the ViaziVitamu database.
This exercise will be extended to other parts of the country in order to capture similar information on sweet potato multipliers, in the immediate future.
