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An experiment in the Democratic Republic of Congo by the Dutch company Solynta has been successful in growing potatoes from seed instead of from seed potatoes.
Potatoes grown from Dutch seeds yielded two to four times bigger harvests for small-scale, poor farmers in East Africa than potatoes grown using local seed tubers. These findings are the result of initial tests using experimental varieties grown from potato seeds by Solynta in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
For several years now, Solynta has been working on breeding potatoes grown from the actual seeds of potato plants. This method makes it possible to develop new varieties of potatoes faster, and better able to withstand potato blight. Planting with seeds rather than seed tubers reduces the cost of transporting planting material as only 25 grams of seed is needed to sow the same number of new potatoes as...