Russia’s Minister of Agriculture, Alexander Tkachev, reckons
it will take five to seven years to develop domestic seed potato production sufficiently
to be able to replace imported seed stock.
Speaking at a meeting on Monday about the development of
potato breeding the Minister said imported potato seeds currently supply around
80% of the demand.
"We need to thoroughly understand what seeds work with
our farmers, what potential is available for domestic selection and how we
should build our work with research institutions to five to seven years, [so] Russian
farmers could use mostly domestic potato seeds" said the Minister.
Russian seed potatoes resources currently include 409
varieties of which 209 are from Russian breeding and 200 of foreign selection.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture's analytical centre, most of the domestic potato varieties are not used by
agricultural producers due to their low competitiveness and most successful
domestic breeding varieties do not reach the farmers due to a lack of mechanisms
to promote them.
The Minister also acknowledged that while the demand for ware potatoes
is almost entirely supplied by domestic production, early spring
potatoes are imported from other countries.
About 80% of the Russian potato crop, which reached 3mmt in
2016, is grown on small farms.