Marketable tubers for the tropics – International Potato Center

Robinson notes that the resulting potatoes combine market-demanded characteristics with traits such as disease resistance, short dormancy, and harvestable tubers within 80-90 days of planting, which enables farmers to grow potato between two rice crops, producing three crops per year on the same land. Together, those attributes can increase yields, incomes and climate resilience, reduce agrochemical use, and decrease pressure to convert natural areas to farmland.

According to Robert Graveland, HZPC’s Research and Development Director, the company plans to register four short-listed potatoes as varieties in Vietnam, Indonesia, India and Kenya for dissemination to farmers in the coming years.

“The main goal is to reach out to smallholder farmers, to secure greater food production,” Graveland explains.

Boosting smallholder yields

HZPC primarily sells seed potatoes to medium- or large-scale farms. But there are over 500 million small farms in the world, and they produce most of the food consumed in Africa and Asia. Recognizing the business opportunities, the company is developing new strategies to reach this growing market. CIP, on the other hand, has traditionally worked with national breeding programs to develop smallholder-appropriate potatoes, but farmer adoption of  these varieties can be hindered by insufficient promotion and dissemination.

“This is a win-win partnership. HZPC gains the benefit of our experience working with and developing varieties for small-scale farmers. And we can rely on HZPC’s capacities in to rapidly develop and sell highly marketable seed potatoes,” says Ian Barker, Director of CIP’s Global Potato Agri-food Systems Program.

Cultivating a new variety carries risks, which is why most Asian and African farmers plant potatoes of established varieties that they obtain locally. Though free or inexpensive, those seed potatoes are often infected with pathogens or pests that greatly reduce yields.

Graveland stresses the importance of helping farmers reduce their risk and understand that investing in quality seed pays a substantial dividend. “The world needs to double food production by 2050, and that is quite doable with potato if farmers use quality seed of robust, locally-adapted varieties,” he affirms.

For Barker, this initiative not only has potential to benefit farmers and boost food production across tropical Asia and Africa, but could also serve as a model for public-private partnerships for other crops and regions.

“This partnership points the way to innovative approaches to breeding and delivering varieties that could enhance the effectiveness of crop improvement across the CGIAR and beyond,” Barker explains. “Through collaborations such as this, CIP is building forward-looking relationships that will benefit generations of small-scale farmers.