Aeroponics and Sand Hydroponics: Alternative Technologies for Pre-Basic Seed Potato Production in Ethiopia

Abstract

Potato is the third most important food crop worldwide after rice and wheat in terms of human consumption, and global production exceeds 374 million metric tons. Despite this immense importance, potato yields from small-scale farmers in most developing countries including Ethiopia fall far below their capacity, mainly because of insufficient access to high quality seed and limited knowledge on crop husbandry. Moreover, 98.7% of the seed being used come from the informal seed system which lacks appropriate phytosanitary schemes. Frequent seed degeneration nature and low multiplication rate of the crop also provoked less productivity of potato. Hence, technological improvements are necessary for increasing potato productivity and decreasing different bottlenecks of the crop. Aeroponics, sand hydroponics and tissue culture based seed multiplication techniques are currently accelerating the supply of disease free seed potato to the country. Thus, to take advantage of the yield capability of potato by improving the maximum production determinant elements like seed quality, these alternative pre-basic seed potato multiplication technologies could be duly verified and used as an option to boost the yield of potato.

Comparative analysis for producing sweetpotato pre-basic seed using sandponics and conventional systems

“…This could also be the reason why the sandponics system significantly (p < .0001) outperformed the conventional soil substrate by 31.6% considering biomass accumulation. Our findings corroborate previous work where sand hydroponic systems have also been used successfully in the production of high-quality pre-basic seed potato (Mbiri et al 2015;Mateus-Rodriguez et al 2013;Tessema and Dagne 2018). Similarly, soil-less production systems for different crops have shown several benefits compared to conventional production systems (Wahome et al 2011).…”

Microbial Contaminants and Their Control Methods: A Review with Reference to Potato Tissue Culture

“…Plant tissue culture technology is used for the production of double haploids, cryopreservation, propagating new plant varieties, conserving rare and endangered plants and to produce secondary metabolites and transgenic plants (IAEA, 2004). Moreover, plant tissue culture could be used as an alternative option for the supply of highquality planting materials for developing countries to solve shortage of quality seed, the most common production bottle neck for vegetatively propagated crops like potato (IAEA, 2004;Tessema and Dagne, 2018). Potato tissue culture at Holetta Research Centre, Ethiopia is playing a key role and used as a gear to supply in vitro plantlets to the seed production schemes of aeroponics, sand hydroponics and screen houses (Figure 1) that enhances accelerated quality seed potato supply efficiency by 7.6% .…”

Solanum tuberosum Cultivation Using Nitrogen Recovered from Local Wastewater

“…potato tubers, a yield of 97 kg/cap-year. The system provides the high areal productivity that is central to increasing potato production in many low income areas dominated by small scale farmers [79].…”