News on Potato Varieties and Seed from Africa

The International Potato Center (CIP) has collaborated with Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) to release the KC Sweet Purple variety of sweet potato in an effort to tackle ongoing climate challenges facing farmers in Kenya.

Tanzania and the Netherlands have agreed to collaborate on developing a joint roadmap for the thriving seed potato ecosystem.

Egypt continues to hold the position of the second biggest supplier of sweet potatoes to the Dutch market and is increasing its export of sweet potatoes to the Netherlands year after year.

Imports of seed potatoes had been growing in Morocco and reached their at least five-year high of 60,000 tonnes in the MY 2022/23

This year is marked by strong demand and insufficient supply of potatoes, a situation that professionals of the industry and media go so far as to call 'the global potato shortage'.

Este año se ha caracterizado por cambios en el clima mundial que han trastocado las producción de patatas y provocado alteraciones en los canales de aprovisionamiento.

El obtentor de patatas y exportador de semillas holandés HZPC ha completado un ensayo de salinidad en Egipto con la cosecha organizada a finales de enero.

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.