Sao Paulo, Brazil, 03 Aug – Brazil is to export mini seed potato tubers from Sao Paulo in Brazil to Inner Mongolia in China.

The system developed by the Campinas Agronomy Institute (IAC) in Brazil will be granted to the Agricultural Research Institute in Hulunbeir after meetings set up September 2008 and July this year by IAC researcher José Alberto Caram de Souza Dias.

Instead of conventional export where the whole potato is used, in this case only the shoots of the tubers are used.

Initially, the partnership with China involved the transfer of Dutch varieties of seed potato but for bureaucratic reasons, the Dutch products were replaced by those developed at the IAC, all virus-free and resistant to the main diseases found in Chinese cultivation.

The Chinese government aims to expand potato production which it intends to increase from 4.5 million hectares to 6 million.

The productivity of potato cultivation in China is small with an average crop of 15 tonnes per hectare, while in Brazil 50 tonnes are harvested per hectare with a specialized workforce and favourable production systems. (macauhub)