Morphological Characteristics of Varieties of Sweet Potato, Cenoura, Margarita, Rainha and Roxa, Cultivated in Amazonas, Brazil

Sweet potato [Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.] is a nutritious food, from an easy-to-handle cultivation, present in all Brazilian regions, with great socioeconomic relevance. There is a wide genetic diversity of sweet potato, expressing different flesh and skin colors, and containing different nutritional values. However, only sweet potatoes with cream flesh and white or purple skin are present in the Manaus market. It is important to promote the visibility of the varieties that are being cultivated in a less expressive way, often only by the indigenous people. In this way, the valorization of the product and the conservation of agrobiodiversity will be encouraged. One obstacle to identifying varieties is that the same variety can have different names, and the same name can be given to different varieties. Therefore, it is essential that a morphological description of the varieties present locally is made. This will be a subsidy for future research and actions aimed at the development of the primary sector that has the sweet potato as its object. Given the above, this work aimed to morphologically describe the sweet potato varieties Cenoura, Margarita, Rainha and Roxa present at the Experimental Farm of the Federal University of Amazonas. The Cenoura, Rainha and Roxa varieties have different skin and/or flesh colors and a tuberous root shape, catering to different consumer tastes. The Cenoura variety (skin and orange flesh) has the potential to be cultivated by Amazonian farmers and introduced in the local market (Alves, 2021; Filgueira, 2008; Huamán, 1991).