A breakthrough blight-resistant potato variety, CIP-Asiryq, is set to be domesticated in East Africa.
It is expected in Kenya within a few years.
It promises to reduce costly fungicide use, improve yields and strengthen food security for millions of smallholder farmers.
East Africa will be adapting a new blight-resistant potato variety developed in Peru for the Andes in South America. This can alleviate the plight of farmers in the African region who have endured heavy crop losses and spent millions on chemical control.
The variety was developed by scientists from the International Potato Centre (CIP) and partners using wild potato relatives with resistance to the disease. The cultivated varieties created this way will be available in Kenya in a “few years” for cultivation by local farmers.
The improved plant will be shared with potato breeding programmes in the region under the International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, including in Kenya, where the crop is the second-most important staple, according to Crop Trust, an international organisation involved in the initiative.
Thiago Mendes, a researcher in the development team and part of an East African network of plant breeders, is working with Kenyan collaborators to ensure smooth adaptation of the new varieties, a Crop Trust representative told Down To Earth.
The project will be largely implemented in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Egypt, Algeria, Rwanda, South Africa and Malawi.
According to the National Potato Council of Kenya, late blight in potatoes can cause yield losses of up to 80 per cent — a severe economic blow to farmers, given that potato is the second-most consumed crop in Kenya after maize.
In the East African highlands, an estimated 2.5 million smallholder farmers depend on potato as both a cash and as a subsistence crop. In Kenya and Uganda, over 1 million smallholder farmers grow potatoes, and losses due to late blight can account for up to 70 per cent of their harvest. In Uganda alone, the losses due to the disease are known to cost more than $129 million annually, according to CIP.
The variety called CIP-Asiryq, derived from Solanum cajamarquense, a wild relative of the potato conserved in the CIP genebank, will potentially save farmers around the world $3-10 billion in annual losses.
It requires fewer fungicide sprays, cooks 25 per cet faster than Peru’s popular Yungay variety, and “shows strong potential for both table and processing markets”, the CIP representative added.
The breakthrough was set in motion during the Crop Wild Relatives project and made possible through the Biodiversity for Opportunities, Livelihoods and Development (BOLD) project, both led by the Crop Trust with the funding from the government of Norway.
CIP-Asiryq also provides hope to farmers in other parts of the world who may be struggling to contain the disease, Mendes, lead of the BOLD potato pre-breeding project, added.
The new variety, he noted, is also remarkable for its ‘versatility’, with farmers in Peru’s Huanuco cherishing its potential for both fresh consumption and processing, giving producers more flexibility to meet market demand.
“This potato variety was developed for the fresh consumption — not specifically for processing — but some producers do grow for the processing industry,” added Raul Canto, coordinator of the agrobiodiversity area of the Yanapai Group, which was involved in the new variety’s development. “Small-scale farmers will be happy to earn more by selling to this market and so will the processing companies.”