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    Cer­ti­fied potato seeds double farmer's yield

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    By George Munene

    “From an acre of farm­land ap­ply­ing the right ag­ro­nomic prac­tices, cer­ti­fied seeds should har­vest a min­imum of eighty 50kg bags and can yield up to 200 bags,” says Enoch Rugut an ex­ten­sion of­ficer at Eger­ton Uni­versity’s potato mul­ti­plic­a­tion cen­ter.

    Rugut ex­plains that using seeds dis­sem­in­ated between farm­ers as plant­ing ma­ter­ial you are more likely to har­vest 50 bags and will be more than lucky to get 80 bags from your shamba.

    Cer­ti­fied seeds are free of com­mon potato dis­eases that are soil-borne such as bac­terial wilt and those spread by seeds like soft rot.

     

    The coun­try's potato seed pro­duc­tion stands at just 6,700 tonnes against a yearly de­mand of 30,000 tonnes, mak­ing most farm­ers opt to re­cycle the pre­vi­ous year’s har­vest as seed. In an ef­fort to avail more cer­ti­fied potato seeds to farm­ers, the Na­tional Potato Coun­cil of Kenya is in­creas­ing potato mul­ti­plic­a­tion cen­ters across the coun­try.

    These will in­clude cen­ters in Nairobi, Na­k­uru and Meru of­fer­ing pop­u­lar seed vari­et­ies such as Shangi, Unica, Wanjiku, Markies among oth­ers.

    Re­lated News: Kibiri­chia farmer lifts potato earn­ings 50% with stor­age and off-sea­son sales

    Re­lated News: Proper plant­ing for over 10 tonnes from acre of sweet pota­toes

    To get peak yields, Enoch ex­plains, a farmer needs to start off by sourcing for the right seeds. The highest classed seeds are re­ferred to as breed­ers or gen­er­a­tion 0; these achieve up to 90 per cent of ideal yields but their cost is ex­or­bit­ant for most farm­ers. “We mostly mul­tiply Cer­ti­fied 1(C1) seeds as they are both high yield­ing (60-50 per cent) and are still af­ford­able for most farm­ers,” he says. Their price ranges from Sh54-80 per kilo­gram of seed.

    Farm­ers also need a timetable start­ing from plant­ing, to earth­ing up—cov­er­ing pota­toes up to a foot high done after three weeks, side-dress­ing with fer­til­izer, and second earth­ing up done three weeks after the first.

    The per-acre cost of pro­duc­tion should av­er­age Sh80,00 for farm­ers and Sh150,000 for seed pro­du­cers.

    Farm­ers wish­ing to be­come seed pro­du­cers need to have their farms and seed source checked and li­censed to be free of pests and dis­eases then pay a Sh100,000 cer­ti­fic­a­tion fee.

    Eger­ton’s Cli­mate and Water Smart Ag­ri­cul­ture Centre is cur­rently selling the Unica potato to farm­ers and is grow­ing Wanjiku and Shangi vari­et­ies. Farm­ers look­ing to get the proper plant­ing and man­age­ment prac­tices to em­ploy to get the most out­put from their farms can also get free train­ing from the Njoro based cen­ter.

    Re­lated News: In­sti­tute pi­on­eers ba­nana paper use in man­aging potato cyst nem­at­odes

    Seed pro­du­cing com­pan­ies: Eger­ton Uni­versity (Na­k­uru-Njoro)-0742934636

                                                    Ag­rico EA (Na­k­uru-Kabarak)-0742844207

                                                    Kisima farm (Meru Timau)-0716968766

                                                   GTIL (Nairobi-Lower Ka­bete)-0722760373

    Na­tional Potato Coun­cil of Kenya:0799739578

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