Egerton University has initiated an outreach project to train potato farmers on the modern “tissue culture” seed propagation technology aimed at enhancing potato productivity in Nakuru County.
Associate Professor of Agronomy at the University Prof. Anthony Kibe said they were educating the farmers under Egerton University’s Enhancing Access to High-Quality Seed Potato for Improved Productivity and Income of Smallholder Farmers (HQSPIPI) farmer out-reach project which was being implemented through the Community Action Research Programme (CARP).
Prof. Kibe explained that tissue culture technology involved the cultivation of plant tissues or organs in specially formulated nutrient solutions in a lab or a controlled environment using sprouts or tissue-like leaves, which are grown in a medium with nutrients and disease-killing chemicals to produce certified potato seeds.
According to Professor Kibe, when the tubers are transplanted in the field, the result is potato seed which is certified and could be sold to farmers for high yields at relatively affordable prices.
“Tissue culture offers an excellent way for the rapid propagation of potato seed offering high yielding disease-free planting material using hydroponics technologies,” said Kibe.
The University don said continued use of poor potato seeds in the country had impacted negatively on the crop yields, saying on average, farmers were registering a yield of around 10 tonnes of potatoes per hectare, while the crop’s potential was as high as 30 tonnes per hectare and contrasted the scenario with countries like Egypt and South Africa, where he said yields stands at 40 tonnes per hectare.
He regretted that only about 2 per cent of potato farmers in Kenya use certified seeds, compared to leading world potato producers such as the Netherlands, where 99 per cent of farmers use certified seeds.
Inadequate quality disease-free potato seeds of improved varieties were also cited as another major cause of low yields with Prof. Kibe saying that only a few privately-owned farms and a handful of state-owned seed enterprises produce certified potato seeds.
While acknowledging that the seed producers, including the state corporation, could hardly meet the demand for certified seeds in the country, Prof. Kibe said there was a need to train more seed producers at the village level to ensure the availability and affordability of the seeds.
The Don however said the Egerton farmers’ outreach project was now training a number of farmers to become producers of disease-free seeds for sale to other farmers for increased yields and higher income from their produce.
Despite the potato crop being important as a staple food and a potential contributor to the country’s food security, Prof. Kibe regretted that the crop had been a low-priority food crop in Kenya’s agricultural research system and advised more evidence-based research to be done on the crop.
The Egerton farmer outreach project, according to Prof. Kibe is one of the activities undertaken by the “Transforming African Agricultural Universities to meaningfully contribute to Africa’s growth and development (TAGDev)” initiative started by Uganda-based Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) in partnership with the MasterCard Foundation.
The initiative, he added, aims at training farmers to plant quality seeds, test their soils, effectively manage diseases and pests, among others, for increased productivity, and organize them in marketing cooperatives for higher incomes.
By Esther Mwangi and Charloth Chepkemoi
