News on Phytophthora from Africa

Kenya nears release of '3R' Late Blight-resistant potatoes after 20+ years of research by CIP & KALRO. Supported by 2Blades, Feed the Future & Simplot, the varieties promise higher yields, disease protection, and improved food security by 2026.

Rwanda is now a key hub for seed potato trade in the Great Lakes Region, thanks to farmer-led innovations, Africa’s largest minituber facility, a national seed catalogue, and efforts toward regional integration and formal cross-border seed markets.

Solynta's potato varieties with high resistances against Late Blight provide Kenyan farmers with good yields, as demonstrated in a comparative field test during an extensive spray/no spray trial in Limuru, Kenya.

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.

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.

Corteva Agriscience launched Zorvec Encantia, a new fungicide that specifically targets late blight, a detrimental pathogen currently compromising potato growth in South Africa. The solution, based on Zorvec active, is the first member of a novel class of fungicides.

Free smartphone app Nuru helps African potato farmers to detect late blight (Phytophthora) and early blight (Alternaria) since 2021

Imagine being a potato farmer in Ethiopia, Kenya, or Nigeria. On a small piece of land, which you depend on for food and income, you have spent months planting, weeding, and watering.

In an effort to combat diseases which have been hampering potato yields for the past two years in Dedza, International Potato Centre (CIP) recently handed over disease resistant Irish potato seeds to ten farmers in the district.

Victoria - a popular local potato variety in Uganda - is extremely susceptible to potato Late Blight disease, but a resistant GM version of this variety has been developed.
With testing almost complete, it is up to the government biosafety regulatory authorities in Uganda.

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.

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.

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.

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