Sweet potato workshop in PNG

ACIAR sponsored a workshop on sweet potato which was held in Madang, Papua New Guinea (PNG) on 28 and 29 June 2006. This ACIAR's funded-workshop was attended by scientists and technicians from PNG, Australia and Indonesia. The objectives of the workshop were to share information, examine the implications of preliminary findings, set priorities for future research and establish mechanism for sharing results. Six break-out sessions were held during the workshop: (i) criteria for sweet potato cultivar evaluation; (ii) soil fertility and water management issues considering that rapid population growth has increased the pressure on land and is reducing soil fertility; (iii) pests and diseases which are a potentially important limitation to production and they are likely to increase with intensification of production; (iv) improvement of the marketing system including market intelligence and information; (V) development of processed products such as sweet potato noodles; and (vi) adoption and dissemination of technology.