Exploration of Sweet Potato Cultivar Markets Availability in North West Province, South Africa

Sweet potato products are necessary for the provision
of essential nutrients in every household, regardless of their poverty
status. Their consumption appears to be highly influenced by socioeconomic
factors, such as malnutrition, food insecurity and
unemployment. Therefore, market availability is crucial for these
cultivars to resolve some of the socio-economic factors. The aim of
the study was to investigate market availability of sweet potato
cultivars in the North West Province. In this study, both qualitative
and quantitative research methodologies were used. Qualitative
methodology was used to explain the quantitative outcomes of the
variables. On the other hand, quantitative results were used to test the
hypothesis. The study used SPSS software to analyse the data. Crosstabulation
and Chi-square statistics were used to obtain the
descriptive and inferential analyses, respectively. The study found
that the Blesbok cultivar is dominating the markets of the North West
Province, with the Monate cultivar dominating in the Bojanala
Platinum (75%) and Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati (25%) districts. It
is also found that a unit increase in the supply of sweet potato
cultivars in both local and district municipal markets is accompanied
by a reduced demand of 28% and 33% at district and local markets,
respectively. All these results were found to be significant at p<0.05.
The results further revealed that in four out of nine local municipality
markets, the Blesbok cultivar seems to be solely available in those
four local municipal markets of North West Province. It can be
concluded that Blesbok, relative to other cultivars, is the most
commercialised sweet potato variety and that consumers across this
Province are highly aware of it. For other cultivars to assume market
prominence in this Province, a well-designed marketing campaign for
creating awareness may be required. This campaign may be based on
nutritional advantages of different cultivars, of which Blesbok is
relatively inferior, compared to orange-fleshed sweet potato varieties.

• V. M. Mmbengwa
• J. R. M. Mabuso
• C. P. Du Plooy
• S. Laurrie
• H. D. van Schalkwyk

• Cultivar
• malnutrition
• markets
• sweet potato.

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