Bhubaneswar, Sept. 29: The Shimla-based Central Potato Research Institute has offered technological help to set up a tissue culture-based seed production centre for potato cultivation in Odisha.

The centre would help provide better plants with high yielding potential to farmers. In tissue culture, a small piece of quality potato tuber can give rise to hundreds of plants under laboratory conditions. The institute had already helped the Manipur and Haryana governments set up such potato centres.

Director of the institute B.P. Singh told The Telegraph that since the potato-farming sector had become weak in Odisha, the central institute under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research would provide the latest knowhow.

Saying that the potato-based food processing industry, which includes chips and bhujia-making, has become successful business ventures in states such as Gujarat, Odisha farmers and entrepreneurs could use the high-yielding seeds for more production of quality potatoes for economic development.

Singh was speaking at the two-day annual group meeting of All India Co-ordinated Research Project on Potato at Odisha University of Agriculture Technology (OUAT). The event concluded on Monday.

Vice-chancellor of OUAT Debi Prasad Ray, who is also the chairman of the council committee on horticulture, said: “There was a time in the 70’s when Odisha was producing more potatoes than it needed. But now, it is depending on states such as Bengal and Punjab even for seeds. The proposed tissue culture-based facility, if becomes a reality, will serve the farmers of the state to a great extent.” He, also urged the Odisha government to formulate a policy on potato farming as storage of the produce was equally important.

Director of the Odisha horticulture department S.K. Chadha admitted that the cold storage system had become a stumbling block in popularising the crop across the state.

“We have 10 agro-climatic zones in the state and two zones have excellent potential to adopt high-yield and size-specific potato cultivation, which can have great selling potential. Other agro-climatic zones can also adopt specific potato seeds to have more production. We are also going to adopt better market linking practices, so that the farmers will be encouraged to produce the varieties,” Chadha said.

Sources said while Odisha consumes more than 5 lakh tonnes of potato a year, the annual production is 1.75 – 1.8 lakh tonnes. The rest come from Bengal.

“In Bengal, entrepreneurs get concessions and incentives for the cold stores, but there is no encouragement from the government here. Of 25 cold stores established both by the Odisha government and private players, nearly a dozen are defunct ,” said a cold store owner in the city.

Pramod Chandra Satpathy, potato breeder with the research project, OUAT, said: “The production of the tuber crop can be more once the farmers will be trained on the use of true potato seed method. In practice, even today, potato farmers in Odisha use tubers to get plants, but the seeds generated from potato plants are the best option to get the true potato seed.”

Stressing the establishment of more cold stores, efficient management and temperature control over the facilities, Satpathy also added that the horticulture department should take up potato cultivation in a mission mode. Except the coastal zone where the winter spell is short, districts such as Koraput and Kandhamal, which are already producing two harvests a year, can use true potato seed method to yield more potatoes.