Potential impacts of bioprocessing of sweet potato: Review

Abstract

Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L.) is among the major food crops in the world and is cultivated in all tropical and subtropical regions particularly in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. Asia and Africa regions account for 95% of the world's production. Among the root and tuber crops grown in the world, sweet potato ranks second after cassava. In previous decades, sweet potato represented food and feed security, now it offers income generation possibilities, through bioprocessing products. Bioprocessing of sweet potato offers novel opportunities to commercialize this crop by developing a number of functional foods and beverages such as sour starch, lacto-pickle, lacto-juice, soy sauce, acidophilus milk, sweet potato curd and yogurt, and alcoholic drinks through either solid state or submerged fermentation. Sweet potato tops, especially leaves are preserved as hay or silage. Sweet potato flour and bagassae are used as substrates for production of microbial protein, enzymes, organic acids, monosodium glutamate, chitosan, etc. Additionally, sweet potato is a promising candidate for production of bioethanol. This review deals with the development of various products from sweet potato by application of bioprocessing technology. To the best of our knowledge, there is no review paper on the potential impacts of the sweet potato bioprocessing.

Keywords: Sweet potato; bioprocessing technologies; food and feed bioproducts; nutritional aspects; renewable biofuel.