News on Potato Varieties and Seed from Africa

Solynta and PepsiCo’s Ethiopia-based Foods Unit, Senselet Food Processing PLC (Senselet), have launched a project to introduce hybrid true potato seeds (HTPS) to Ethiopia.

Elder Isaiah Buwah is growing potatoes for forty years in the Plateau State, North Central Nigeria. Having seen the impact from late blight first hand, he truly enjoyed the harvest of the first batch of - resistant - biotech potatoes.

The Zimbabwe Potato Micro-propagation Association (ZPMA) has spearheaded the resuscitation of seed potato production since this stalled around 2008. The current mandate is to substitute imported seed potato.

A capacity-building initiative that started in Kenya to fill gaps in the supply of high-quality early generation seed (EGS) is now spreading across Asia and many African countries

South African seed potato producer RegenZ and European hybrid potato seed innovator Solynta announced a partnership to bring hybrid true potatoes to the South African farming community.

Richard Mbaria makes a point at his potato in Kapsita village of Nakuru County, Kenya. The farmer has increased his production per acre thanks to training by a CARP+ project implemented in the area by Egerton University.

A community project that provides farmers with healthy seed potato, cultivated using innovative laboratory techniques is significantly increasing yields in Kenya, an agricultural expert says.

More than 3,000 small-holder potatoes farmers from Nakuru are set to benefit from a KES 127 million (USD 1 million) program aimed at enhancing potato production in the County.

Potato farmers have welcomed the government’s on-going trials on the use of agricultural biotechnology in producing a new Irish potato variety resistant to the devastating late blight disease.

In the midst of a sunlit room in Nnewi, south-east Nigeria, a woman measures out four parts of sweet potato puree – the colour of apricot – into a large basin containing six parts wheat flour.

Commercialisation of potato, a common food crop largely consumed in East Africa, will receive a boost following the launching of a value-chain platform dedicated to it.

Agrico PSA is proud to communicate another impressive milestone reached: now over 50,000 Kenyan potato farmers are digitally partnering via their Facebook page! PSA’s Facebook page has evolved into a platform where potato knowledge is shared.

Potato farmers in Kabale District, Uganda are elated following the commissioning of Muhingi Products Factory which is hoped to create added value addition for both sweet potato and Irish potato produce.

Sources revealed to Al-Mal that 131 thousand tons of potato seeds arrived from European facilities approved for import from last October until early January, for 76 approved varieties.

Droughts have long posed a threat to farmers in southern Africa, and models predict they will become more frequent, unpredictable, and intense as global warming continues.

The Savannah Agriculture Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research [CSIR – SARI] has introduced new varieties of the ‘Frafra’ potato crop to farmers in the Talensi and Nabdam districts of the Upper East Region.

Mustapha Baba Shehuri, minister of state for agriculture and rural development, says Nigeria will be among the world’s top three potato producing countries by 2025.

The triadic comparisons of technologies – or tricot – approach is being used in a citizen-science project funded by the CGIAR Research Program on Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB) to identify and scale up best cassava and potato varieties in Rwanda.