The Ministry of Agriculture is working closely with farmers around the country who are interested in potato farming.

The potato planting season for this year began with a huge interest from farmers. The planting season of this seasonal crop is from May to August every year.

Over the past, years under the Potato Research and Development Programme, the Ministry of Agriculture has been working on producing and storing seeds from the locally grown potato crop in order to reduce the importation of potato seeds.

This year will be the first year farmers will be planting the locally obtained seeds.

Ministry of Agriculture permanent secretary, Jitendra Singh said this year’s locally produced potato yield is expected to be around 410 tonnes where locally planted seeds production is expected to be around 50 tonnes while the imported planted seeds yield is expected to be around 360 tonnes.

“This year 46 hectares of potato is expected to be planted where 10 hectares will be planted with locally produced seeds while 36 hectares will be planted with the imported seeds.”

Initially, potato planting was focused in the Western Division. However, now the Ministry of Agriculture is trying to expand this farming to other areas such as Kadavu and the Northern Division.

Potato Research and Development Programme is allocated a sum of $300,000 in the 2017-2018 financial year.