Development of a vitamin A-rich weaning food and child cereal from dried and `instantized" sweet potato buds

This report documents the work of a pilot project in Guatemala to assess the potential for large-scale production of a processed, dried sweet potato product which could meet the needs, in terms of both culinary and nutritional acceptability, of poor families. The project: (1) documented the industrial process of converting a raw sweet potato crop into dried sweet potato buds; (2) tested a variety of packaging options in terms of cost and protection from light, humidity, and microbial contamination; (3) compared the provitamin A carotenoid (beta carotene) and Vitamin A content of the fresh starting material, the freshly prepared dried sweet potato buds, and the dried sweet potato buds after being stored in different packing materials for four months; (4) tested the acceptability of gruels and purees prepared from reconstituted sweet potato buds among young children and their mothers; and (5) enlisted 36 mothers from urban and rural areas to help develop or gather recipes and suggestions for using the dried sweet potato buds, and compared the recipes for ease of preparation and palatability. The first part of the report presents the results of these activities, while the second consists of appendices which give more detailed information on the chemical analyses, surveys, and recipes which were part of the project.