Agricultural and Biological Research

Emerging seed production technologies of potato in India

Vipul Pratap Singh, Bankey Lal*, Surabhi Sharma, Aeshna Sinha and Arun Kumar Verma

India, known as the world’s second-largest potato producer, understands how crucial good seed is for potato farming. But there are hurdles in the seed production process: high seed rates, slow multiplication, viral infections and problems with storing and moving the seeds. This leads to a lot of edible food being used as seed instead of being eaten and it costs a lot-about 40%-50% of total production expenses. One big issue is that not enough farmers are using newer, better potato varieties because it’s tough to get enough good seeds and they have to keep replacing them often. To tackle these problems, scientists are working on faster ways to produce healthy seeds in big batches to meet the demand in India. Around the world, people have been shifting from old-fashioned to high-tech seed production methods since the early 1900s. Especially in hot places, like tropical areas, there’s hope that creative ideas can make producing potato seeds easier. In India, there are new ways of making potato seeds that show things are changing. But there are still problems, so it's important to keep researching and improving to overcome them.