Potato seed production starts at four locations

Parveen Arora

Tribune News Service

Karnal, November 23

The state’s dependency on Punjab and Himachal Pradesh for potato seed would soon be a thing of the past as Potato Technology Centre, Shamgarh, in Karnal, in collaboration with International Potato Centre, Peru, has initiated the work of the potato seed production at four different locations.

If all goes as per the plan, then Haryana would soon produce enough seed to meet the increasing demand of potato. Both the centres are developing different potato varieties, including heat tolerant, high dry matter and short duration, to meet the demand in processing and domestic sectors.

At present, the state is producing around 10,000 metric tonnes (mt) of seed against 1 lakh mt of requirement, due to which it is dependent on Himachal Pradesh and Punjab, says Dr Satyender Yadav, Deputy Director, Potato Technology Centre, Shamgarh.

“We have identified four locations in Haryana — Shamgarh, Narnaul, Sirsa and Ladwa, where new varieties are being produced by the progressive farmers,” the Deputy Director said, adding that this step would also enhance the income of farmers as well as of the skilled labour.

Although Sirsa comes in the non-traditional potato-growing area, with this initiative it will be a good producing district soon, the Deputy Director said.

“Under this initiative, two trials are being conducted at the Centre for Excellence of Fruit, Mangiana, Sirsa. One trial is to evaluate clones of International Potato Centre, Lima, and the second trial is for evaluating the location specific varieties of Central Potato Research Institute, CPRI, Shimla,” said Dr Yadav.

Two farmers have been given seed of two varieties — Kufri Pukhraj and Kufri Chipsona-1 — for demonstration. Production of quality seed at Sirsa district would encourage the farmers to grow more area under potato, he said.

“We will sign an MoU with the Central Potato Research Institute, (CPRI), Shimla, on November 28 for aero-phonic technology for producing potato seed in air without using any growing media like soil, coco-peat and others,” he said.