CPRI tells Indian Potato farmers to switch to heat tolerant potato varieties

With the mercury level steadily rising across India, potato growers need to switch to new varieties of heat-tolerant seeds for saving their crops, agriculture scientists have suggested. “The way the temperature level is increasing, potato growers would get less time to mature their crops.

They need to switch to either heat-tolerant varieties of seeds or to seeds that mature early,” Bir Pal Singh, director of Central Potato Research Institute, told HT.
The research unit has already developed some such varieties and is working on to develop few more varieties that would be able to combat the changed weather pattern being observed for last few years.

The first heat-tolerant variety the research unit produced is named Kufri Surya, which is being tested at different areas including Hariyana, Uttar Pradesh, Punjub and West Bengal.

“The new breed has shown good results,” said Singh.

He explained that the changing pattern of climate would not give crop the needed time to grow and it would lead towards premature production, resulting in losses. Hence the peasants need to grow such varieties, which would either be able to combat the heat wave or mature early.