ZIMBABWE – The government of Zimbabwe has come up with several interventions to improve the local production of potatoes to meet the burgeoning demand that is a result of a ban imposed to foster local production and investments made in the competitiveness of the sector.
Absurdly, statistics from Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStats) show that fresh or chilled potato imports increased 392 percent from US$2.6 million in 2019 to US$12.9 million in 2022.
At the same time, Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development permanent secretary Dr. John Basera revealed that the country has an is an increase in potato seed imports.
“There is an increase in potato seed imports, only for now, while we are working on localizing potato seed production towards a 100 percent import substitution scenario. We have since closed our borders on the table and processing potato imports,” said Dr. Basera.
Seed Services Institute head Mr. Edmore Mtetwa said to support increased local potato production, the government had allowed supervised imports of certified potato seed by seed houses to complement local seed production.
“This attracted foreign breeders who started to engage local seed houses to register their varieties with the Seed Services Institute. Consequently, in the last 10 years, various seed houses registered a total of 25 high-yielding, table, chipping, and crisping potato varieties after going through the necessary multi-locational adaptability,” Mr. Mtetwa noted.
“This brings the total number of potato varieties registered in Zimbabwe to 32, giving farmers a wide choice of planting materials. Among these new varieties are specialized ones for the processing industry being used for crisping and chipping.”
To further incentivize local potato production, the government facilitated the registration of new players in the seed supply side, and to date, the total number of seed houses producing seed potatoes has grown from only one in 2009 to 12 by 2022, added Mr. Mtetwa.
The Tobacco Research Board, with the help of the Zimbabwe Potato Micro-Propagation Association (ZPMA), has been designated as a potato seed certifying agent mandated to produce and market potato seed.
ZPMA has contracted potato seed growers in suitable areas to assist in the seed multiplication program.
The Board has a state-of-the-art laboratory and purpose-built green-house hardening facilities for commercial production of clean disease-free potato plant lets using tissue culture technology into mini tubers, which are later transferred to the field as generation one (G1) to generation four (G4) for the production of ware and table potatoes.
The potato seed multiplication program is meant to truncate the critical shortage of potato seed, which has led the country to import 60% of its requirements, as a result of the reduced production of seed from the Nyanga quarantine area.
In 2010, there was also an imposition of a ban on table potato imports, to protect the local potato farmers from unfair competition from neighboring countries that were flooding the local market.
Since then, national potato production trends have been increasing exponentially from 52 000 tonnes in 2010 up to 475 000 tonnes produced in 2017, per Agritex, Crop Assessment Reports, 2010-2017.
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