By Olivia Obongó
Published January 10, 2025
A sweet potato is a tuber that grows from a vine and is used both as food for humans and livestock.
Purple sweet potatoes are mildly sweet and taste almost like wine. Unlike other varieties, purple sweet potatoes have citrus, herbal and floral-rose aromas and tend to be drier and starchier than traditional sweet potatoes.
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Though cooked slightly longer than the traditional sweet potatoes, purple sweet potatoes are require little maintenance other than watering and pest control. They likely don’t need fertilizer but a low-nitrogen fertilizer could be used in treating the soil. Too much nitrogen in the soil causes the potato vines to thrive at the expense of the tubers that humans need for food.
It takes between 120 and 180 days for purple sweet potatoes to mature and get harvested and the farmer could make a net profit of between Sh150 000 and Sh300, 000 per acre.
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So what are the benefits of the purple sweet potato?
Nutritionists say that purple sweet potatoes contain carbohydrates, fibre, fats, proteins, vitamins (A, B12, and C) and minerals like Calcium, iron, potassium, magnesium and zinc.
An acre of land requires about 4000 vines and yields about 5,100 – 11,150 or even 17,850 kg depending on soil preparation, pest control and climatic conditions.
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