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Studies detailing characteristics of starch among cassava varieties are important in improvement of such varieties to meet farmers demands when they use cassava for food and also provide important information to industrialists who exploit cassava starch in the its various uses. But most importantly availing information on cassava starch allows the breeding of required varieties for specific purposes. This study presents first hand information on importance of random hybridization in generating peculiar cassava clones (progenies) with characteristics significantly different from parents hence giving bigger chances of selection among progenies for novel starches. It also details some of the important characteristics that can be based on to give a comprehensive selection criteria for the best performing progenies and from which progeny family they can be obtained from. It also opens up new areas of research in starch and crop improvement for the benefit of farmers and starch industrialists in Sub Saharan Africa and other cassava growing regions of the world
About the author
Nuwamanya Ephraim is researcher at National Crops Resources Research Institute Uganda and works on crop biochemistry. He has published original research articles on starch in various journals. His research interests include carbohydrate chemistry and nanotechnology, biofuels, plant secondary metabolite profiling and plant physiology.
