In 2019, in all forms of farming, including household plots, the agrarians of the Sughd region harvested more than 500 thousand tons of potatoes, which is about two thirds of the crop harvested by the republic.
Now the region's potato growers are faced with the task of increasing the production of tubers to 2024 million tons by 1.
To accomplish this task, the leadership of the region, cities and districts, as well as farmers, developed a set of measures. First of all, this is the expansion of cultivated areas due to fallow, rainfed and pasture lands. Until 2024, it is planned to increase the area under potatoes by more than 12 thousand hectares only in the area of Devashtich. A special program for laying the Dakhkatsoy-Dakhanasoy irrigation system is aimed at this. In the coming years, a total of 64 million somoni ($ 6,59 million) will be allocated for its implementation. To date, more than 10 million somoni ($ 1,03 million) has already been disbursed, which has allowed the introduction of new lands into the crop rotation, which are allocated for potato growing, as well as the breakdown of new orchards and vineyards. All this will increase the potato production in the region from the current 120 thousand tons to 300 thousand tons in 2024.
Measures are also being taken to significantly expand the acreage allocated for potatoes in Kuhistoni, Mastchinsky District, where work on irrigation and putting another 240 hectares of land into crop rotation has been started this year, and the area under this crop has been significantly expanded in the city of Panjakent.
Another measure aimed at increasing potato production in the region is the widespread introduction of early potato sowing. This year in the potato growing regions of the region sowing of early potatoes was carried out on an area of 16067 hectares, which is 1426 hectares more than last year. This allowed in the first half of the year in agricultural cooperatives and farms of the region to collect 36772 tons of potatoes, which is almost twice, namely 17867 tons more than in the same period last year.
The range of measures also includes breeding work aimed at increasing the yield of potatoes. Currently, one of the main problems of the industry is the lack of high-quality seed material. It is solved through breeding work in industrial research institutes, experimental stations and farms, as well as through the acquisition of high-quality high-yielding potato seeds from abroad. So far, the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan are the main suppliers of such seed material to Tajikistan, and in particular to the Sogd region. In all likelihood, in the near future, high-quality potato seeds will be imported from Belarus. The Republican Unitary Enterprise "Scientific and Practical Center of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus for Potato and Horticulture" has already begun work on the cultivation of seeds of harvested potato varieties adapted to the conditions of northern Tajikistan. It is known that the employees of this center intend to create a demonstration site in Tajikistan for growing various berries cultivated in Belarus.