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Morphological Traits Associated with Ornamental Value in Horticultural Sweet Potato (Ipomoea batatas)
Do Yeon Kim1
,
Yeon Mi Lee2
,
Hualin Nie3
,
Seung A Kim4
,
Kwantae Park4
,
Mi-Nam Chung5
,
Sun Hyung Kim4*
1Korea Biosafety Clearing House, Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Daejeon 34141, Korea
2Institute of Green-Bio Science and Technology, Seoul National University, Pyeongchang 25354, Korea
3Department of Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology, Konyang University, Daejeon 36365, Korea
4Laboratory of Plant Genetic Engineering, Department of Environmental Horticulture, The University of Seoul, Seoul 02504, Korea
5Value Crop Research Institute, National Institute of Crop and Food Science, Rural Development Administration, Muan 58545, Korea
*Corresponding Author
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Abstract

Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.) is traditionally cultivated as a food crop; however, several cultivars have attracted growing interest as ornamental plants owing to their diverse foliage colors, leaf architecture, and flowering characteristics. Despite their increasing horticultural use, objective morphological criteria for evaluating ornamental sweet potato cultivars under standardized field conditions remain limited. In this study, six ornamental cultivars and two edible cultivars were evaluated in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three blocks. Twenty-six morphological traits related to vegetative growth, leaf morphology, storage root development, and flowering behavior were characterized at 90 days after transplanting and 120 days after planting. Significant cultivar differences were observed for the replicated quantitative morphological traits. Among the cultivars evaluated, the six ornamental cultivars showed greater variation in leaf shape and pigmentation than the two edible reference cultivars; dynamic ontogenetic color transitions were observed in ‘Sweet Caroline Purple’ (green → purple) and ‘Morning Purple’ (purple → green) during leaf maturation, whereas the edible cultivars maintained stable green foliage throughout the growing season. An image-based CIELAB analysis of standardized leaf images quantitatively confirmed these transitions: the two transition cultivars showed large, opposite shifts along the green–red axis (Δa* = ‒25.1 and +14.6), whereas all other cultivars remained within the range of |Δa*| ≤ 3.5. Contrary to common assumptions, storage root formation was not completely suppressed in all ornamental cultivars: ‘Morning White’ and ‘Morning Purple’ produced roots comparable in length to the edible cultivars, whereas ‘Margarita’ and ‘Gold Finger’ showed markedly reduced root development. A principal component analysis of 13 quantitative traits explained 63.4% of total phenotypic variance, showing that the six ornamental cultivars spanned a broader region of the PCA phenotype space than the two edible reference cultivars. Mature leaf morphology and petiole architecture were identified as the primary contributors to phenotypic differentiation and represent candidate variables for cultivar characterization and future breeding evaluations. These findings provide a systematic morphological framework for ornamental sweet potato cultivar evaluations and support future breeding, germplasm characterization, and landscape utilization efforts.

Keywords
cultivar evaluation
flowering behavior
foliage pigmentation
landscape horticulture
ornamental sweet potato
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Information
  • Publisher :KOREAN SOCIETY FOR HORTICULTURAL SCIENCE
  • Publisher(Ko) :한국원예학회
  • Journal Title :Horticultural Science and Technology
  • Journal Title(Ko) :원예과학기술지
  • Received Date : 2026-06-30
  • Revised Date : 2026-08-19
  • Accepted Date : 2026-09-28
  • DOI :https://doi.org/10.7235/HORT.20260040
Journal Informaiton Horticultural Science and Technology Horticultural Science and Technology
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