Shiyan Sweet Potatoes

Shiyan Sweet Potatoes

　　Sweet potatoes are known as one of the “Three Treasures of Shiyan.” They are planted on approximately 500,000 mu of land annually, yielding around 400 million jin (converted to clean grain), ranking first in Hubei Province. They are a key resource for Shiyan and rank fourth among grain crops in terms of planting area. The Eshu 6 variety of sweet potato grown in our city has achieved a maximum yield of 14,962 jin per mu, with a starch content as high as 28%.

　　Sweet potatoes are important industrial raw materials for medicine, food, chemical industries, and also serve as new energy and natural feed crops. Beyond limited human consumption, their development and utilization include making dried sweet potatoes, mixing with animal feed, producing vermicelli, crafting preserves, boiling sweet potato sugar, frying sweet potato crisps, processing starch for noodles, and creating chemical products such as lactic acid, citric acid, and citrates using sweet potatoes as raw materials. Currently, the refined deep-processing direction of sweet potatoes includes producing sweet potato noodles, lactic acid, citric acid, and biodegradable plastics. In today’s era of material abundance, sweet potatoes are praised as “cosmic food” or “premium health food” due to their benefits such as aiding weight loss, reducing post-meal blood sugar, and preventing cardiovascular diseases, and they remain popular on dining tables.

　　Traditional Chinese medicine considers sweet potatoes to be “neutral and mild in nature, non-toxic, strengthening the spleen and stomach, nourishing yin essence, fortifying bones and muscles, enriching blood and harmonizing the middle, and prolonging life.” Modern research shows that sweet potatoes not only have anti-cancer and hemostatic properties, but some of their components also provide special protection to the mucous membranes of various organs in the digestive, respiratory, and urinary systems. Sweet potato leaves also help inhibit pathogen proliferation, regulate immune function, enhance disease resistance, delay aging, lower blood sugar, and prevent night blindness, among other therapeutic benefits.

　　China’s annual demand for sweet potatoes exceeds 4 million tons, with the instant noodle market alone requiring nearly 300,000 tons, yet the national output is only slightly over 100,000 tons. Therefore, there is significant market potential in the processing of sweet potato starch.

　　Shiyan’s mountainous areas boast vast mountainous land well-suited for sweet potato cultivation. By 2015, the city plans to expand the sweet potato planting area to 600,000 mu, with total output reaching 600 million jin (converted to clean grain), generating a sweet potato industry value of 600 million yuan. Efforts will focus on developing deep-processing of sweet potato foods, aiming for a processing output value exceeding 500 million yuan. By 2020, Shiyan aims to achieve the “Four Ones” goal for the sweet potato industry: 1 million mu of planting bases, 10 billion yuan in comprehensive output value, income growth for 1 million farmers, and 1 billion jin of converted grain production.