Navigating the Health Implications of Quality Declared Seed Use in Potato Cultivation
The International Potato Center (CIP), the Amhara Regional Agricultural Research Institute (ARARI), and the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) conducted a study published in Crop Science to (i) determine the reliability of potato quality control using the current Quality Declared Seed (QDS) protocol, and (ii) recommend a comprehensive, actionable intervention to ensure the health of potato QDS in Ethiopia. This is a summary of that study.
by Jorge Luis Alonso with ChatGPT-4
Introduction
Potato is a key food security crop in Ethiopia, but yields are lower than global and African averages due to limited access to quality seed and poor crop management practices. Specifically, current potato production could be increased by 140% with access to high-quality seed and improved management practices. However, seed systems for vegetatively propagated crops (VPCs) such as potato are often overlooked, poorly organized and attract little investment.
In addition, seed regulatory frameworks for VPCs need to be treated differently from those for cereals and legumes. Quality Declared Seed (QDS) has been promoted as a means to improve seed quantity and quality, but it has worked better for cereals and legumes than for VPCs due to the high vulnerability to seed-borne diseases.
The Ethiopian Standards Authority defines QDS as quality seed produced by registered smallholder farmers in accordance with established quality standards. However, the inspection of QDS has many limitations, including limited financial incentives for external inspection committees, lack of trust among regulatory bodies, and weak coordination among different levels. Therefore, this study aims to determine the reliability of potato quality control using the current QDS protocol and to recommend comprehensive measures for potato QDS health assurance in Ethiopia.
Discussion
Upon review, the study found no significant factors to explain the variation in latent Ralstonia solanacerum (Rs) prevalence in potato seeds. A high prevalence of latent Rs infection was found in potatoes produced by farmer seed group cooperatives (FSGCs), with 20.5% of samples infected, compared to individual decentralized seed multipliers (IDSM), which had mostly Rs-free samples. This may be due to FSGC’s lack of knowledge of land use history, which may lead them to plant clean seeds in infected fields. FSGCs also face limited access to appropriate fields for quality seed production.
Interestingly, the current potato QDS certification protocol tends to pass Rs-infected seed as clean, which could lead to a high incidence of bacterial wilt (BW) infection among potato producers in Ethiopia. This risk could be reduced by using more IDSM whose seed was mostly Rs free.
Differences in latent Rs infection prevalence were also observed between districts. Poor agronomic practices and lack of new seed sources also contribute to the spread of Rs. It is noteworthy that local seeds, especially in Amhara, were more Rs-free than those from FSGCs in Oromia and Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples (SNNP) regions, possibly due to better land selection and site availability.
Conclusion
The data reveal a high level of latent Rs infection in quality declared seed (QDS) produced by FSGCs, the preferred method of providing quality seed to most smallholder potato farmers in Ethiopia. This level of infection is similar to that found in local or home-saved seed produced from ware potatoes. Conversely, QDS produced by individual decentralized seed multipliers has a lower prevalence of latent Rs infection, although it is not completely absent.
This evidence suggests that the production of potato QDS by FSGCs, currently the most favored model in Ethiopia, is inappropriate and acts as a conduit for the spread of Rs to uninfected areas. Furthermore, the FSGC model wastes valuable, scarce and clean early-generation seed from reputable sources, as a significant proportion of the newly acquired, expensive and Rs-free seed potatoes grown by FSGCs become infected within the first cycle.
The lower prevalence of latent Rs among IDSM suggests that infection rates can be further reduced through increased farmer training, awareness and support for latent infection testing. However, latent Rs infection remains inevitable for potato QDS produced by both FSGCs and IDSMs under the current quality assurance protocol.
This indicates that the current process for the production and certification of QDS is unreliable and unsustainable. It is therefore recommended that the current QDS protocol be revised to include testing for latent Rs infection in seed potatoes produced by both FSGCs and IDSMs, despite the likely increase in production costs. This revision should ideally include the introduction of serology or other more sensitive molecular techniques, regardless of the associated costs. Without these changes, the potato subsector in Ethiopia risks collapses due to the accumulation and spread of seed-borne degenerative diseases, especially BW.
Source: Tessema, L., Negash, W., Kakuhenzire, R., Belay, G., Seid, E., & Enyew, M. (2023) Seed health trade-offs in adopting quality declared seed in potato farming systems. Crop Science. https://doi.org/10.1002/csc2.21025
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