Your sweet potatoes are boring.

Fries, pies, casserole-- I don't care how great your recipe is.

If I asked you to describe their flavor, you're probably just gonna say "sweet."

But, there are scientists trying to change that to feed the world and students trying to use potato innovations to build their own futures.

So how do we turn potatoes into solutions for nutritional and social problems?

This is Hungry Planet.

Let's dig in.

Sweet potatoes have a lot going for him.

An average sweet potato gives you more than 50% of your daily value of vitamin A, which is good for your eyes and skin and immune system.

They're packed full of other nutrients too, like calcium, iron, magnesium, and phosphorus.

(speaker) The orange flesh varieties are one of the most popular ones that we see at the grocery store.

And they are orange because they have high beta carotene content.

Orange flesh varieties are very important because of the potential to help fight malnutrition.

(Niba) This is Modesta Abugu, a graduate student at NC State working on the chemistry and genetics that control flavor in sweet potatoes.

By increasing the flavor profile of sweet potatoes, Modesta and her colleagues hope to create root veggies that appeal to an even wider audience.

(speaker) The majority of consumers are actually eating far fewer fruits and vegetables than they need to remain healthy through their lifespan.

And sweet potatoes are a highly nutritious crop.

And they're also-- really have a great deal of potential for development into new varieties and new products that would be something that consumers want to eat, that would help fulfill that gap of nutrients that people are taking in.

(Modesta) Carotenoids gives it a lot of flavors.

And the flavors that they are really marketable for is the fruity or floral flavor.

Purples are really great for their nutritional content.

They have really high levels of anthocyanins.

But then you end up realizing that it comes with all of these terpenes and phenolics, which really does not smell or taste good.

What I'm working on is to measure all of the volatile compounds in that population, and try to identify is there-- if there is any genetic mechanism of control of the favorite traits that we'll be identifying.

(Niba) Alright, so, volatile flavor compounds are these tiny molecules that float in the air and tickle your nose.

They're not like those non-volatile buddies like sugars and amino acids that hit your taste buds.

But when you mix those nose and tongue sensations together, then bam!

You've got flavor!

You can find out more about our sense of smell in "Why Am I Like This?"

(Suzanne) All foods are made up of thousands of components called molecules.

And so this-- the different combinations of the molecules and their arrangement in the food is what gives us those unique flavors and textures that we perceive as the smell, the taste, and how it feels when we are eating it.

In our laboratory, we actually have several specialized analytical instruments that allow us to look at foods at the molecular level.

And then we pair that information with structured sensory testing, which is where we use trained tasters to quantify how humans are perceiving these flavors and textures.

And we put that information together to understand those components of foods that are gonna of give us one flavor or another.

(Modesta) So when we talk about flavor, its actually very complex.

It's an interaction between taste and aroma.

The receptors in your tongue kind of tells you that "Oh, this is sweet.

"Oh, this is salty, or bitter, or it has an umami flavor."

But the process of chewing releases some chemicals.

Those chemicals are called volatile organic compounds.

We have the purple majesty.

So this is also a really high-starch variety.

So you're going to see a specific couple of flavors in there, ranging from the phenolics so the terpenes.

So, phenolics are kind of the compounds that give this earthy or musky flavor.

And that's why people don't like them a lot because it kind of can get bitter.

[inquisitive music] (Niba) This one might be my favorite one so far.

What even is that flavor?

-It's so like, warm... -Yeah.

It's like sweet in a different way.

I think I understand what you meant about like the... fruity flavor almost because it's just sweet in a way that these ones are not sweet.

We are identifying all of the volatile compounds that are present in each of these genotypes, and quantifying them and trying to connect them to what consumers really perceive.

So that would help us really characterize all of the flavors that are present in sweet potatoes.

Using that, we could have enough tools to develop varieties that consumers would like maybe for a particular market that cares about fruity flavor, or a market that cares about earthy flavor, and all of those kinds of things.

Using sweet potatoes to tackle food and nutrition insecurity is already on a lot of people's minds, including a group of students in West Fresno.

The Sweet Potato Project started in St. Louis to offer educational and professional opportunities to local students.

Now it's reached West Fresno.

Students in the area are up against a mountain of challenges, including poorly performing schools and a lack of mental health resources.

So, the Sweet Potato Project hopes to offer solutions to some of these problem, giving students the ability to learn agricultural skills as they plant, harvest, and sell sweet potatoes at a local community farm.

(speaker) Being in Sweet Potato has kind of brought me out of my comfort zone.

So, I can go and I could talk to these people.

And I could go to these places, and be outside my comfort zone and be okay, because Sweet Potato taught me how to step outside the box.

On top of that, they also get the chance to develop business skills through a collaboration with West Fresno Business School.

(Kalon) My favorite part is learning more about the business side, because I do want to start my own business of physical therapy practice for kids.

So this project has actually helping me, like, learn the ways I need to deal with, what I need to go through to do it.

At the business school, students get to take entrepreneurial classes to make a product and a business pitch out of their potatoes.

Typically, every year at Fresno State after we have our two, three, four-week business course that we learn how to make products with, then we go out in Fresno State and they have a whole bunch of judges and everything like that.

And so you pitch to them what your product is, you show them all your hard work that you've had.

And so they give you your feedback.

We have a food truck that's all about sweet potatoes, everything that's based off of what we learned at Fresno State over the years and what we grow.

So for me, the product that I've made, I made sweet potato bobas.

It's never been made before.

It's a freshly new product that's, you know, great for the market.

(Niba) In the past six years, over 200 students have taken part in this project.

(Jay-Lynn) For me, it's always gonna be with, you know, building community.

Because without a community, you don't really have a structure and zone for kids to be mentored or to, you know, deal with mental health like that.

So for me, it's always building community.

That's that's always the best thing for me.

(Modesta) So what we are doing is we need to get a composite sample of all of the roots.

(Niba) So that's why you have to go down the middle?

(Modesta) Yeah, that's for the orthanol time temperature.

(Niba) Sweet potatoes are already causing a buzz.

Especially like a honey-drizzled sweet potato fries.

Yusss.

Yet, Modesta knows there's still untapped flavor and nutritional potential.

It's not as simple as just biting into a freshly baked sweet potato to uncover all these flavors.

There's an intricate science behind isolating each tiny molecule from the aroma of a sweet potato.

Volatile organic compounds are a variety of chemicals that are present in almost everyday life.

In sweet potatoes, volatile organic compounds are mostly found after it's been cooked.

And during the process of baking, an enzyme called amylase is activated, which goes to break down starch into sugars and other carbohydrates.

One of the sugars that are formed from that breakdown process is maltose.

And maltose also happens to be a precursor of so many volatile compounds, which could be aldehydes, ketones, esters.

All of these individual groups are classes of volatile compounds, emit different flavors and aldose.

(Niba) So this is your oven for the sweet potato?

And so, as you're cooking it, you're collecting all of the molecules that like comes from it?

-Yes.

So, we-- -I love that's your oven, the smallest oven I've ever seen.

Yeah!

[laughs] (Niba) After carefully preparing sweet potato samples, Modesta can place them into an instrument that heats them up, essentially mimicking baking, and then examine the volatile chemicals that are released.

The instrument can then separate the components out by their molecular properties, things like size and composition, to give a full list of each and every chemical.

Modesta can then connect those chemicals back to the flavor and aroma properties of each potato.

[soft music] (Modesta) I enjoy it a lot.

Coming here to see the diversity in the field.

Then me going back in the lab analyzing for traits that consumers really do enjoy.

That intersection of consumer needs in plant breeding is evolving in many crops.

And just being the person to apply to a sweet potato is very exciting.

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