National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO) has developed a new sweet potato cultivar "Amahazuki" that can be harvested from August. "Amahazuki" is characterized by extremely high sugar content and sticky flesh with excellent taste. Even in early harvest, the outstanding features could be expressed. It is expected that the supply of "Amahazuki" could be shifted earlier from the season of sweet potato i.e. autumn to summer.
Overview
In recent years, sticky sweet potatoes has been popular in Japan. The famous sticky sweet potato cultivars such as "Annou-Imo" and "Beniharuka", contain high sugar content with good quality. Their exports are expanding rapidly due to the high evaluation from overseas. However, in order to make sweet potatoes sticky and sweet, it is necessary to store them for a while after harvesting to promote the saccharification of starch accumulated during the growing period. Hence their first shipment starts in late September as early as possible. It is also necessary to arrange their baking method, such as lengthening the cooking time so that the enzyme that promotes saccharification from starch well.
The newly developed cultivar "Amahazuki" is characterized by high sugar content from the early stage soon after harvesting without storage. In addition, "Amahazuki" contains a special starch called "low pasting temperature starches". Hence when compared to ordinary sweet potato cultivars, while cooking "Amahazuki" the starch changes to sugar from a relatively lower temperature itself, and after cooking is completed the sugar content is found to be extremely high. In addition, "Amahazuki" has a high sugar content from August soon after harvesting. Hence sweet and delicious baked sweet potatoes can be made soon without the necessity of storing them.
With the introduction of "Amahazuki" as a new cultivar of sticky sweet potatoes, delicious sweet potatoes will be supplied earlier. Sweet potatoes, which are the typical taste of autumn, could be delivered from summer. "Amahazuki" will be supplied with seedlings through private seedling companies, mainly in the Kanto region from spring of FY 2022.
Baked sweet potato "Amahazuki" harvested in August
After baking it has a strong yellow tinge, sweet with sticky texture
For Inquiries
Contact: http://www.naro.go.jp/english/inquiry/index.html
