Ethiopia is one of the major potato producing countries of the Sub-Saharan Africa region where potato is the fastest expanding food crop. The natural environment in Ethiopia is very suitable for year round production of potato using rain-fed and irrigated systems. However, the actual potato yield in the country ranges between 8-10 t/ha, which is slightly below the average for Africa. Shortage of good quality seed has been recognized as the single most important factor limiting potato production in the developing countries including Ethiopia. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to review the accelerating role of rapid seed potato multiplication technologies for potato seed production in Ethiopia. A low adoption of recommended seed potato technologies in the country could be due to a lack of alternative seed potato production methods compatible with farmers’ economic and agro-ecological conditions. Since 2010, Holetta Agricultural Research Centre in collaboration with International Potato Center together are applying different seed potato production hastening schemes to produce early generation seed. These seed multiplication schemes include, tissue culture, aeroponics, sand hydroponics and other rapid multiplication methods in screen house pots. These seed potato multiplication schemes brought a dynamic change for the last five years by accelerating the supply efficiency by 7.6% with enhancing the number from 43,773 mini-tubers to 332,485 mini-tubers. Moreover, these new seed multiplication schemes enhanced the capacity of clean seed production of the country by producing 216,717 mini-tubers of high quality seed from aeroponics and sand hydroponics. The farmers could also access early generation clean seed potato through their nearby cooperatives with affordable price and with lowtransportation cost. Thus, for developing countries like Ethiopia where formal seed system is at infant stages and early generation seed is mostly produced by research institutions, the use of various rapid multiplication techniques could be one option to produce clean seed potato.
An experiment was conducted on a Nitisol of Holetta agricultural research and Jeldu Sub-center using three factors such as potato varieties (Belete, Jalenie and Gudanie), nitrogen rates (87, 110 and 133 kg/ha) and potassium oxide rates (0, 34.5, 69 and 103 kg/ha) that were arranged on randomized complete block design with three replications. The data were subjected to Proc GLM model of SAS software version 9.2. Higher tuber nitrogen content, uptake and utilization was obtained from Holetta location than Jeldu. Increasing nitrogen fertilizer from 87 to 133 kg/ha reduced the tuber nitrogen uptake and utilization efficiency by 75.56 and 75.49%, respectively. The interaction between variety and location also highly significantly affected tuber nitrogen content and nitrogen utilization efficiency. The interaction between nitrogen and variety affected tuber nitrogen in percent and protein content highly significantly. The highest tuber nitrogen and protein content was obtained from Belete and Gudenie varieties at a rate of 110 kg/ha nitrogen. From these results, it can be concluded that, the interaction between nitrogen and potassium rates did not affect significantly any parameter measured in this experiment, while nitrogen, varieties, interaction of location with variety showed significantly different nitrogen use efficiencies and tuber minerals content.
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