About 150,000 Nucleus Potato Tubers To Produce 50,000 Tons Of Certified Seeds

Pakistan Agriculture Research Council has produced 150,000 nucleus potato tubers, which would help in producing over 50,000 tones of certified seed for maximizing per-acre output of the crop in the country

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 21st May, 2021 ) :Pakistan Agriculture Research Council has produced 150,000 nucleus potato tubers, which would help in producing over 50,000 tones of certified seed for maximizing per-acre output of the crop in the country.

The milestone was achieved through commercialization of potato tissue culture technology as potato was an important cash crop of the world and is also widely cultivated across the country.

According to a press release issued by Ministry of National food Security and Research, Pakistan was cultivating potato on an 188.6 thousand hectares with an annual production of 4.61 million tones. The average yield was estimated over 23.6 tons per hectare.

Availability of healthy and disease free seed has been recognized as a single major constraint limiting potato production in the country, it said adding that Pakistan has the capacity to produce good quality potatoes and presently producing only less then 1% of seed requirement against the total requirement of 415,000 metric tons.

Annually, 5,211 metric tons of seed was imported from Holland and other countries and almost $400 million were being invested on this import each year, it added.

To cope with the problem of shortage for the good potato seed, the tissue culture technology was the ultimate solution to rapidly multiply and disseminate the healthy seeds to farmers and this task can be achieved with the involvement of public-private partnership, it added.

For this purpose, government had approved commercialization of potato tissue culture technology in Pakistan worth Rs158.83 million, which was being executed by National Institute for Genomics and Advanced Biotechnology of PARC.

As alternate of imported potato seed, Germplasm was acquired from CIP and Gansu Agriculture University, China which will be evaluated for yield and against stress tolerance.

it said that under this project, public sector will ensure the technical training, provision of nucleus seed and disease free status and quality of potato seed produced by private sector.

Disease free healthy potato nucleus seed produced from tissue cultured plants will be provided to the private sector, farmers and farmers as well as private sector will multiply this seed at their-own for commercial production, it observed.