Improving Potato Seed Tuber Quality and Producers' Livelihoods in Hararghe, Eastern Ethiopia

Abstract

ABSTRACT Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is one of the important vegetable crops in Ethiopia with the potential to improve the national food supply and economic benefits to smallholder producers. Hararghe in eastern Ethiopia is one of the major potato producing regions of the country and potatoes are grown in both the rainy and dry seasons. The increases in potato culture in Hararghe are spurred by ever-increasing population pressure, land fragmentation and the impossibility of sustaining farm families' livelihoods from cereal production. The presence of a regional domestic market and cross-border and export market outlets to the neighboring Djibouti and Somalia have contributed to the development of potato culture in Hararghe. The high yields of potatoes grown on the research station (30-40 metric tones ha−1) are not realized at the producers level in Hararghe (11-13 metric tones ha−1). This might be partly attributed to lack of better yielding modern cultivars and to use of poor quality propagation materi...