Bio-fortified potatoes to hit Indian market soon

The Hindu

2 days ago

Bio-fortified potatoes, with added iron content, will soon be available in Indian markets, said Dr. Simon Heck, Director General of the Peru-based International Potato Center (CIP), in an interview to The Hindu.
Bio-fortified sweet potatoes, additionally added Vitamin A using technology developed by the CIP, are already available in Karnataka, Assam, West Bengal and Odisha, and the CIP will take efforts to make available the seeds of bio-fortified sweet potato to more farmers, said Dr. Heck. He is in India as part of the establishment of the South Asia regional centre of the CIP in Agra. Dr. Heck expressed the hope that the centre will help farmers to access better quality potato and sweet potato seeds and better access to the market.
The CIP believes that the location outside Agra, in the heart of the potato belt of India, is ideal for the new centre, as the Indo-Gangetic plains are the largest potato-producing area in the world. Dr. Heck said the Government of Uttar Pradesh had made available the land and handed it over to the National Horticulture Board, which invited the CIP to establish a centre.
This agreement between the CIP and the Union Agriculture Ministry was signed in the last week of July. It was set up at the demand from the Government of India in recognition of the potential for economic growth and the value generated from the growing potato sector. Dr. Heck said India had the strongest momentum for potato production. 'It may be noted that international companies, especially potato firms from Europe and North America, are increasingly investing in potato production in India,' he said.
Part of market chain
Dr. Heck said farmers wanted better varieties of potatoes that grew well with fewer agrochemical inputs, and they also wanted to be part of the market chain, including food processing. 'What they needed was access to potato seed of the right quality, of the right variety, and at the right time of the year. There are constraints. They don't have enough potato seeds, or they come too late for planting, or they are not of good quality. We need to build the capacity for companies to multiply potato seeds. That will be a major contribution of the CIP,' he said. The CIP was working with private companies and public research institutes to make sure that throughout the chain, right from the initial breeding of new varieties, through multiplication every year, in the right locations, farmers throughout India would have access to good quality planting material.
He said the CIP would also ensure that the vulnerable parts of society had access to nutritious potatoes. There were a number of opportunities along that road, one of which was to work with the government, with public sector food procurement, for school feeding, such as mid-day meals, to link nutritious potatoes into those programmes, more specifically and consistently, to give children access to that. 'Another one was to breed a more nutritious potato,' Dr. Heck said.
The focus was on iron fortification in potatoes. 'We have already shared the germ plasm with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research's [ICAR] Central Potato Institute in Shimla. The first variety has been released in Peru, because iron deficiency is even higher in Peru. Now it is under the evaluation of the ICAR, and it needs to be adapted to the Indian growing conditions,' he said.
He said bio-fortified sweet potatoes with added Vitamin A were being grown by farmers in Odisha, West Bengal, Karnataka and Assam. 'It is already widely produced. They are bright orange inside,' he said.
Coordination committee
The CIP regional centre would be governed by a coordination committee that comprises the Secretaries of Agriculture of India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. The CIP would also study the market in the region that failed to provide adequate prices for potatoes. 'The open market has the glut or sometimes the shortage. The government needs to step in there through market boards and see how they can anticipate supplies ahead of time. New varieties can also expand the window seasonality so that not everybody harvests on the same day or in the same week. That will help with stabilising the price and the supplies,' he said.
On the growing consumption of sweet potatoes around the world, he said it was a tropical crop, unlike potatoes. 'The prospects are very strong for India to be a global supplier of sweet potato. You need to stabilise sweet potatoes through some kind of processing early on. It can be stored without refrigeration, without any chemical additives, for two years. So, for India, places in Africa, that is a very interesting product, from a commercial point of view. It is a final product. You can eat it like that in a school meal and is highly nutritious. It is for the food industry to further utilise it in baking and confectionaries,' Dr. Heck said.