Survey Increases Understanding of United States Sweetpotato Producer Clean Seed Needs

Authors

• Lorin Harvey, Mississippi State UniversityFollow
• Mark Shankle, Mississippi State UniversityFollow
• Rachael Carter, Mississippi State UniversityFollow
• Kelsey Harvey, Mississippi State UniversityFollow

Volume

64

Issue

1

Abstract

A needs assessment of sweetpotato producers across the United States was conducted as part of a strategic planning process to enhance the applicability of research and education. A national survey and a 2-day grant-planning workshop were also used to engage stakeholders to develop a USDA–NIFA Specialty Crop Research Initiative Proposal to improve and promote clean seed programs. Ninety-five U.S. sweetpotato producers completed the survey, representing more than 73,000 acres of production. Therefore, the survey respondents are estimated to account for nearly half of U.S. sweetpotato production, underscoring the importance and relevance of the results.

Authors’ Contribution Statement

L. M. Harvey: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. M. Shankle: Conceptualization, Writing - review & editing. R. Carter: Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Writing - review & editing. K. Harvey: Formal Analysis, Visualization, Writing - original draft.

Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Harvey, L., Shankle, M., Carter, R., & Harvey, K. (2026). Survey Increases Understanding of United States Sweetpotato Producer Clean Seed Needs. Journal of Extension, 64(1), Article 5. https://doi.org/10.66752/1077-5315.5529