UVR8 is the only UVB photoreceptor in plants. In order to further study the function of UVR8 in sweet potato, this study took leafy sweet potato ‘Fucaishu 23’ as the experimental material, and used CODEHOP combined with RACE technology to clone the fulllength cDNA sequence of UVR8 from sweet potato, and named IbUVR8. The expression characteristics of IbUVR8 under abiotic stress were analyzed by qRTPCR, and the IbUVR8 protein was obtained by prokaryotic expression，which lay a theoretical foundation for the regulation of IbUVR8 on anthocyanin biosynthesis in sweet potato. The results showed: (1) the sweet potato IbUVR8 gene was successfully cloned. The fulllength open reading frame of the gene was 1 329 bp, encoding 441 amino acids, with a relative molecular weight of 47 kD and a theoretical isoelectric point of 5.72. The NCBI accession number was KT749986. (2) The results of sequence comparison and evolution analysis showed that IbUVR8 had high sequence similarity with tomato and potato UVR8 protein and was relatively conservative in evolution. (3) The results of qRTPCR showed that IbUVR8 was tissuespecific in sweet potato, and the expression level was leaf>stem>root. Under abiotic stresses such as low temperature, drought and NaCl, the expression of IbUVR8 was upregulated in three different leafcolored sweet potatoes. Under the stress of hormone GA3 and heavy metal Cu²⁺, the expression of IbUVR8 was significantly different among different sweet potato varieties. It was speculated that the expression of this gene was affected by low temperature, drought and NaCl stress. (4) IbUVR8GST fusion protein with a size of about 80 kD was obtained by prokaryotic expression. The results indicated that IbUVR8 was affected by low temperature, drought and NaCl stress, which suggested that IbUVR8 may play a regulatory role in stress resistance signal pathway in sweet potato.