The government is working to increase quality potato seed supply for the farmers by expanding the cold storage facilities for around 60,000 tonnes potatoes by the year 2020-21.
“By expanding the cold storage facilities, the country will be able to meet 10 per cent potato seed supply of the total demand within the next three years,” Agriculture Minister Matia Chowdhury told a function in the city on Sunday.
She said this while inaugurating Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation (BADC’s) potato seed cold storage, central tissue culture laboratory and green house in city’s Gabtoli area in the morning.
Matia said, “Bangladesh is now producing 10 million tonnes of potatoes on 0.5 million hectares of land, however, the country has a demand of nearly 0.6 million tonnes quality potato seeds annually”.
Currently, the agriculture minister said the BADC is supplying only 6 per cent quality potato seeds among the farmers against its total demand.
Matia said the basic potato seed import has significantly reduced in the last three years since a total of 3.0 million potato platelets have been produced locally, which significantly increased the quality of potato seed production in the country.
On the other hand, the per hectare potato production has also increased to 20 tonnes from its earlier 12 tonnes due to increased quality seed supply at the farmers level, the minister told the function, reports BSS.
With BADC Chairman Mohammad Nasiruzzaman in the chair, local lawmaker M Aslamul Haq and Senior Agriculture Secretary Mohammad Mainuddin Abdullah were present as special guests.
