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The Prime Minister harvested mini potato tubers

ByWebmaster

Apr 19, 2023

KAYANZA April 18th (ABP) – The Prime Minister of Burundi, Mr. Gervais Ndirakobuca, proceeded, on Thursday, April 13, to the harvest of potato mini-tubers sown in greenhouses at the Institute of Agronomic Sciences of Burundi (ISABU) located in Munanira in Muruta commune of Kayanza province (north), a check on the site by ABP has revealed.

In a press interview, the Prime Minister said that five varieties of potato were sown in two greenhouses. Those include the variety called Shangi, Mabondo, Ndinamagara, Victoria and Kirundo. He said he was satisfied with the production while specifying that he harvested almost double the previous one. Since these mini potato tubers have been made available to ISABU, the Burundi Prime Minister expressed confidence that they will help increase production as long as they are released to farmers.

For her part, the ISABU researcher working on tuber-root crops, Mrs. Micheline Inamahoro, pointed out that the cause of the insufficiency of selected potato seeds lies in the fact that previously ISABU multiplied seed to the pre-basics because there were no private seed multipliers involved. For Ms. Inamahoro, things are tending to change, especially since there are today private multipliers, seeds. However, she lamented the fact that there are multipliers who, instead of saving seeds for dissemination, sell them for consumption. As a remedy, she proposed that the ministry in charge of agriculture, via its decentralized services, closely monitor seed multipliers in order to be reassured of their quality and that their harvests are sold as seeds, not as consumables.