ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Crop and Product Physiology
This article is part of the Research TopicPhysiology and Production of Cash Crops: Seeking Ways to Increasing Productivity and Stabilizing YieldView all 8 articles
A two-phase evaluation system integrating hydroponic and field screening identifies nutrient-efficient sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.) germplasm
Provisionally accepted
Kang Du1Genmin Lyu1Yongxian Chen1Shunjie Zhang1Qiuming Ye2Pan Pan1Chaobin Yang1Daobin Tang1Jichun Wang1
Changwen Lyu1
Bo Xu3*
Kai Zhang1*- 1Southwest University, Chongqing, China
- 2Hongta Liaoning Tobacco Co. Ltd., Liaoning, China
- 3Zhengzhou Tobacco Research Institute of CNTC, Zhengzhou, China
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Sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.) is a crucial crop for global food security. However, its sustainable production is hindered by low nutrient use efficiency. Reliable screening protocols that accurately identify nutrient-efficient germplasm of this crop across developmental stages are still lacking. To bridge this gap, we established a novel two-phase evaluation system integrating hydroponic seedling screening with multi-nutrient field validation. We conducted Using principal component and regression analyses of 35 germplasms lines under controlled deficiencies of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) deficiencies,. We Fidentified five conserved seedling traits were identified, including leaf number per plant, shoot fresh weight, root fresh weight, the shoot dry weight, and net photosynthetic rate (Pn). These traitsthat consistently correlated with tolerance to N, P, or K deficiency, thereby supporting their use as robustutility as reliable early indicators of nutrient stress. Field validation further confirmed that storage root fresh and dry weight, nutrient content, accumulation, and use efficiency varied significantly among nutrient treatments and genotypes, serving as key indicators of field performance. This integrated approach successfully identified elite germplasm with specific nutrient use efficiency: XN1985-7 as a low-N-tolerant and N-efficient utilization genotype, XN17104-132 as low-K-tolerant and K-efficient utilization, XN2141-3 as low-P-tolerant and P-efficient utilization, and notably XN2153-5, which exhibited concurrent tolerance to low N, P, and K with broad-spectrum efficiency. Our studyintegrated two-phase framework provides an a scalable model for screening nutrient-efficient germplasm in root crops, thereby contributing to sustainable breeding programsinnovative, predictive screening framework that links early-stage phenotyping to field outcomes, offering practical tools and elite genetic resources for advancing sustainable sweetpotato breeding.
Keywords: Germplasm resources, nutrient use efficiency, Sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.), two-phase evaluation, Yield validation
Received: 05 Jan 2026; Accepted: 04 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Du, Lyu, Chen, Zhang, Ye, Pan, Yang, Tang, Wang, Lyu, Xu and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Bo Xu
Kai Zhang
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