ConAgra Sets Sweet Potatoes Straight

CHASE, La.—The deep orange vegetables sprouting at an agricultural research station here are the root of ConAgra Foods Inc.'s biggest bet in years: an effort to reinvent the lowly sweet potato for mass consumption, starting with its shape and sugar content.

For decades, sweet potatoes have been a holiday favorite. In the past decade, they've popped up increasingly at restaurants catering to diners eager for something new.

ConAgra hopes to make the sweet potato a modern-day equivalent of its stepbrother, the russet potato. In the mid-1940s, entrepreneur J. R. Simplot developed the frozen French fry, thus elevating the russet from kitchen staple to multibillion-dollar franchise.

Alas, knobby yams aren't ideal for machines designed for russets, and their color and sweetness aren't uniform. So three years ago, ConAgra started working with scientists at the Louisiana State University AgCenter and elsewhere to change some characteristics of sweet potatoes.

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