Selecting the best plants to improve seed potato

The potato is an important food crop in the highlands of Kenya. It is mostly grown in agro-ecological zones more than 1,500 metres above sea level, where population density and pressure on agricultural land is high. A major problem in smallholder potato production in Kenya is that many seed potatoes, the material for planting a new season’s crop, carry viruses and bacteria. In the growing plants, these viruses and bacteria can cause wilt, which leads to lower yields. In the past, interventions to tackle this problem have focused on specialised commercial seed producers who make..