News on Potato Defects and Diseases from Africa

Russia has agreed to ease a ban on potato exports from eight farming areas in Egypt, allowing shipments to resume from June 6.

Russia’s agricultural quarantine authorities flagged two potato shipments imported from Egypt that were found to be contaminated with potato brown rot.

Tanzania has excelled in experimental trials of high yielding and disease resistant potato varieties under a climate smart agriculture programme aimed to improve food security.

Experts in potato breeding and research have identified Eastern Province of Rwanda as a potential alternative for clean potato seed production.

Zambia and South Africa may be perfectly at peace, but farmers on either side of the Limpopo River - the border between the two countries - seem engaged in a trade war. And it is mostly about potatoes...

A survey done in 20 counties in Kenya released earlier this month, shows that Potato Cyst Nematode infestation has reached 80 to 100 per cent in some of the potato growing areas.

Situated in the Northeast of Tanzania, the district of Lushoto is part of the so called highlands of Tanzania where potatoes are traditionally grown. Due to heat and lack of resilient potato varieties, farmers would often lose all the crop.

Potato tubers are affected by a number of blemishes, which can cause severe economic losses. This 'Focus on Potato' presentation by Jacquie van der Waals, Professor at the University of Pretoria in South Africa can serve as a guide for growers and others in the potato industry to help with identification of these blemishes.

In Uganda, a series of field trials began in 2015 to assess whether twelve highly resistant GM plants of the ‘Desiree’ and local ‘Victoria’ variety provided by the International Potato Center CIP offer a durable resistance to late blight

Nakuru will test and release (late blight resistant) varieties of potato seeds for small-scale farmers, Agriculture executive Dr Stanley Chepkwony has said.

Plans by Kenya to import Irish potatoes from the Netherlands have got agricultural experts worried, with some warning that it could bring a more virulent form of late blight to the region.

Scientists in Uganda will soon start confined trials of genetically modified strains of Irish potato designed to be resistant to Phytophthora infestans, the fungus that causes potato blight, now devastating the crop in the west of the country.

The potato (Irish) that has fed the people of southwestern Uganda (Kabale) for generations is being threatened by several pests and diseases, including the potato bacterial wilt.

Njoroge is studying a new lineage of Phytophthora infestans called KE-1 that is spreading rapidly across East Africa.

Climate change could result in a positive outcome for the potato industry and possibly lead to potatoes becoming one of the top staple crops in the world

Russia has discovered brown rot in a shipment of potatoes imported from Egypt, threatening to halt trade of the crop between the two countries, an Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture official said Wednesday

East African farmers, who are mostly small-scale, currently select their seed potatoes from the mass of harvested potatoes. That results in lots of virus diseases and potato brown rot, as well as low yields of an average of 10.5 tons per hectare. Tha...

Potato Farmers in Kenya have opposed a decision by the government to import seed from the Netherlands, insisting that the move will kill the little but growing initiative to produce clean planting seed potato and will expose the country to potato disea...