Dual-Benefit Breeding in Sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas): Leveraging Secondary Metabolites for Crop Resilience and Human Nutrition

Sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.) is a globally important crop valued for its adaptability, nutritional contribution, and role in food security. However, persistent agronomic constraints—particularly weed pressure and increasing input limitations—continue to challenge sustainable production. At the same time, sweetpotato is increasingly recognized as a functional food crop due to its abundance of phenylpropanoid-derived secondary metabolites, especially chlorogenic acid, which has demonstrated antioxidant, metabolic regulatory, and anti-obesity potential. Despite these attributes, secondary metabolites have historically received limited attention as direct breeding targets. This paper proposes a dual-benefit breeding framework that intentionally integrates the nutritional and ecological functions of secondary metabolites into sweetpotato cultivar development. We argue that phenylpropanoid metabolites represent multifunctional traits capable of simultaneously enhancing human metabolic health and crop ecological competitiveness through residue-mediated weed suppression. By synthesizing evidence from plant ecology, polyploid genetics, and ideotype-based breeding theory, we demonstrate how secondary metabolites can be reframed as selectable, dosage-responsive traits rather than incidental metabolic by-products. Special attention is given to the opportunities and challenges associated with sweetpotato’s autohexaploid genome, including allele dosage effects, environmental plasticity, and threshold-based trait expression. We further discuss breeding strategies that integrate functional phenotyping, canopy dynamics, and agronomic performance within ideotype-guided selection pipelines. The proposed framework highlights how cultivar-embedded ecological functions can reduce reliance on external inputs while preserving yield stability and nutritional value. By positioning secondary metabolites at the intersection of nutrition, ecology, and breeding, this conceptual analysis provides a foundation for developing multifunctional sweetpotato cultivars and offers a transferable model for polyploid crop improvement under sustainability-driven agricultural systems.