Potatoes are becoming increasingly popular in Asia, where population growth and urbanization are creating opportunities for smallholders to raise their incomes.
The Asia-Pacific frozen potato market was worth over US $ 2018 billion in 19 and is projected to reach over US $ 23 billion by 2030. Benefits can be drawn from the growing demand for products now. Asian and African farmers need potato varieties that are adaptable to climate change, yielding and pliable.
Five years ago, scientists from the International Potato Center (CIP) teamed up with a Dutch company HZPC in a public-private partnership to create high-yielding varieties adapted to tropical conditions.
The work used the genetic resources of two very different gene pools: commercial technological potatoes HZPCgrown primarily on large-scale temperate farms and tropical lowland populations from which local varieties have been developed, grown by millions of small-scale farmers in Africa and Asia.
Crossbreeding of elite parents from both populations, the use of genetic markers, and fast selection in Vietnam have halved the time it usually takes to create a variety.
HZPC and the CIP have jointly achieved what they could not have done independently. The resulting potato combines early ripening, disease resistance and a short dormancy period.
The tubers can be harvested 80-90 days after planting, which allows farmers to grow potatoes between two rice crops, producing three crops a year on the same land.
According to Robert Graveland, director HZPC on development, the company plans to register four varieties of potatoes in Vietnam, Indonesia, India and Kenya in the coming years for distribution to farmers.
HZPC mainly sells seed potatoes to medium and large farms. But there are more than 500 million small farms in the world, they produce most of the food consumed in Africa and Asia. Recognizing business opportunities, the company is developing new strategies to enter this growing market. The CIP, on the other hand, has traditionally worked with national potato breeding programs for smallholder farmers.
The world needs to double its food production by 2050, and this is feasible with potato crops if farmers use quality seeds of sustainable, locally adapted varieties.
This initiative can not only benefit farmers and stimulate food production in tropical Asia and Africa, but it can also serve as a model for public-private partnerships for other crops and regions.