Pakistan wants to grow seed potatoes itself

“Most seed potatoes in Pakistan are highly dependent on imports, making the price of local high quality seed potatoes expensive and unaffordable for many low-income farmers. Our tissue culture lab aims to grow high quality potatoes locally and reduce our dependence on foreign seed potatoes ,” says Babar Ijaz, Shandong Rainbow Agricultural Technology's Overseas Project Manager. Last year, floods destroyed many crops in Pakistan, while potato yields rose from 5.873 million tons in 2021 to 7.937 million tons in 2022, a 35 percent increase as the floods failed to hit the potato-growing center of Punjab. Pakistan, on the other hand, imports 20,000 tons of seed potatoes annually. Since Pakistan's seed potatoes are still dependent on imports, a greater supply of local seed ...