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Global Potato conference inaugurated

Agriculture Minister, Shri Sharad Pawar, called upon farmers to exploit the vast potential for export of potatoes by adopting available technology and maintaining high quality.

The Minister argued that while India is the third largest potato producer in the world, its contribution to global potato trade is a mere 0.5 percent. India has the required production technologies and the produce is free from major diseases, which provide significant opportunity for export of potato products.

Pawar was addressing farmers after inaugurating the Global Potato Conference. Over 400 scientists, trade and industry representatives and policy makers from all continents are attending the Conference.

Pawar informed that in recent years, India has seen record production of horticultural crops. This, he said, has been possible with the launch of mega schemes such as the National Food Security Mission, Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojna and the National Horticulture Mission, coupled with research initiatives. Going by the trend seen in the past, the goal of the NHM to double horticulture production from 150 million tonnes in 2003-04 to 300 MT by 2011-12 seems fully achievable, he said.

Felicitating the Central Potato Research Institute, the premier potato research body in India, for developing a large number of varieties, including trans-genics with high protein content and late blight resistance, the Minister asked Indian scientists to proactively work in the areas of productivity enhancement, sustainable use of natural resources and the likely impact of climate change. He also flagged the need for technologies for use by small farmers, especially for local storage of this perishable crop.

DG, ICAR, Dr. Mangala Rai, called for evolving short-duration potato varieties so that potato could fit in various cropping systems. He also expected more use of biotechnology, tissue culture and other research and production tools for improving productivity, quality and health of the crop. The other areas that will need focus, he said, are production of quality planting material, adoption of new post-harvest technologies, and developing value added products.

The year 2008 is being observed as ‘International Year of the Potato’ by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) keeping in view the potential of this crop in providing food security at world level. Potato happens to be the most important non-grain food commodity, with more than 320 million tonne a year production from nearly 20 million hectare of farmland.

Source: PIB

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