Commercialization of Potato Tissue Culture Technology in Pakistan

Islamabad:Potato is an important cash crop of the world and is also widely cultivated throughout the Pakistan on an area of 188.6 thousand hectares with an annual production of 4.61 million tones (FAOSTAT, 2019) with an average yield of 23.6 tons per hectare. Availability of healthy disease free seed has been recognized as a single major constraint limiting potato production in Pakistan. Pakistan has the capacity to produce good quality potatoes and presently producing only <1% of seed requirement against the total requirement of 415000 MT. Annually, 5211 MT of seed is imported from Holland and other countries and almost $400 million are being invested on this import each year.
For the availability of healthy potato seed, through tissue culture technology virus free mini-tubers at mass scale can be produced. To cope with the problem of shortage for the good potato seed, the tissue culture technology is the ultimate solution to rapidly multiply and disseminate the healthy seeds to farmers and this task can be achieved with the involvement of public-private partnership. For this purpose Govt. of Pakistan approved a project worth Rs. 158.83 Million on “commercialization of Potato tissue culture technology in Pakistan” to National Institute for Genomics and Advanced Biotechnology, Pakistan Agricultural Research Council Islamabad. Under this project 150,000 nucleus potato tubers were produced which are source material for 50,000 tones of certified seed.
As alternate of imported potato seed, Germplasm acquired from CIP and Gansu Agriculture University, China will be evaluated for yield and against stress tolerance. Under this project, public sector will ensure the technical training, provision of nucleus seed and disease free status and quality of potato seed produced by private sector. Disease free healthy potato nucleus seed produced from in vitro grown tissue cultured plants will be provided to the private sector/farmers. Farmers/private sector will multiply this seed at their-own for commercial production.