SEED POTATO REVOLUTION IN BANGLADESH

Seed-potato, through tissue culture has brought a silent revolution in Bangladesh for the last couple of years.

It is already proved because many farmers of potato, tomato, strawberry, banana and gerbera flower through using tissue culture technology achieved the more of their expectations.

 The benefits of Tissue Culture Seeds:

  1. seeds are 100 percent virus and disease free
  2. Healthy, high quality and environment-friendly higher-yielding and hygienic.
  3. Production can be enhanced to at least 50 percent more on the existing field if only the Tissue Culture Quality seed are sowed by the growers.
  4. If increase the production by qualitative seed then dependency of import from other countries will be less.
  5. If the production and foreign demand increase the youth entrepreneur will be motivated for cultivation and export as well.

 

 

The Global Ranking of Bangladesh by Potato production

In the global ranking of potato production, Bangladesh stands in seventh.

The farmers of Bangladesh grows more than 10 million tons of the tuber crop. The yearly domestic demand is 7 million tons.

Dutch Breed is under experiment to establish in Bangladesh

BADC (Bangladesh Agriculture Development Board) brought 19 varieties of quality potato seeds from different countries. Among them some were brought from the Netherlands in 2020.

Some of these varieties are world famous such as: Alcander, Santana, Sunshine, Queen Anne, Labella, Edison, Donata and Prada. These breeds are famous because of their dry contents, starch, good skin, flesh colours and shapes. Bangladesh has successfully field-tested of these breeds.

  The Status of Potato Export by Bangladesh:

Bangladesh earned $51 million In the financial year 2020-21 by exporting only 55,000 tons of potatoes.

The status of Potato Production of Bangladesh

Potato production exceeded the target of 10.65 million tones set by the government for Fiscal Year 2021-22. Bangladesh also recorded an average per hectare yield of 23.19 tones. This record highest ever in the history. Per hectare yield was 23.87 tones from high yielding varieties and 14.73 tonnes from the local variety. Farmers cultivated potatoes on 4,76,891 hectares of land. High yielding varieties were cultivated on 4,41,325 hectares and local varieties on 35,566 hectares of land. Ref: Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE)

Importer Countries of Potato:

Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Nepal, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

High Yielding Varieties Vs Local Varieties

Total production of the country comes, 1.05 crore tones by high yielding varieties, and 5.24 lakh tones from local varieties.

Potato Seed demand in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is currently producing 103.17 lacs tones of potatoes. To product such volume the country needs the demand for seeds is 7.5 lacs. At present, Bangladesh Agriculture Development Corporation (BADC) provides 4% potato seeds. And only 1% comes from the private sector. Very surprising is that, remaining 95 percent of the seeds are either produced by the local farmers themselves or collected from local sources. Ultimately the quality of these seeds is not guaranteed.

Share your love