Kaukau next boom crop

By Tammie Joske for Post Courier

Studies in Australia may lead to a huge step in PNG’s farming industry thanks to one of the country’s most common vegetables, sweet potato.

Joel Waramboi is currently undertaking his PhD at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, where he is researching the many benefits and alternative uses of sweet potato.

A scientist working for PNG’s National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI), Waramboi uses exclusion-cooking technology by processing the sweet potato at high temperatures, allowing him to transform the vegetable into flour.

He then experiments by making various food products from the flour, including pastas, noodles and crisps.
As the country has an abundance of sweet potato, Waramboi says this study will eventually be helpful to farmers in PNG.

“The (sweet potato) crops have been around for about 400 years now. That’s a lot of production; about 2.9 billion tons of it has been processed in PNG,” he says.

“We can commercialise the crops and slowly grow this industry so people can make a living on it.”
On completion of his PhD at the end of this year, Waramboi plans to return to NARI in PNG and begin to work with major food companies and distributors, such as Nestle and Paradise Foods, who are interested in going into the processing of sweet potato crops.

With the market in wheat alternatives increasing, and sweet potato being such a common food in PNG, this will not only benefit those companies who choose to produce and sell the flour, but also help the country economically.
“Coeliac disease and gluten intolerance seems to be a growing problem in Australia, the UK and in the US, so there is good potential here,” says Waramboi.

“It (sweet potato flour) should generate some interest within this market.”
In Australia, approximately one in 100 Australians are diagnosed with Coeliac disease.