Johnston Reporter

State Rep. Larry Strickland (R-Johnston) recently hailed a development by North Carolina State researchers who found a way to reduce crop loss related to internal necrosis in Covington sweet potatoes.

Strickland linked to a September article from TechWire, which discusses a post-harvest treatment for Covington sweet potatoes, which account for approximately 90% of the state’s sweet potato crop.“This treatment will save N.C. sweet potato producers millions of dollars,” Strickland noted in his Facebook post discussing the development.

While Covington sweet potatoes are high-yield and relatively uniform in shape as well as being high in nutritional value, their susceptibility to internal necrosis has been a flaw haunting the variety for years, according to TechWire.

“Internal necrosis was becoming a big issue in the industry, so the Sweet Potato Commission decided we needed a task force to look at this from across the college,” David Godwin, a third-generation sweet potato producer who has served on the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission in a number of roles, was quoted as saying by Tech Wire. “When you’ve got an issue where you really don’t know what’s happening, you need to get somebody from every field and aspect of agriculture and life sciences to work on it.”