Impact of hybrid potato

Book excerpt: This book describes the potential impact of the innovative hybrid breeding technology in potato. Conventional potato production is based on cumbersome breeding and multiplying of seed tubers. Seed tubers degenerate during the many generations of slow multiplication. Their bulkiness makes them difficult to store and transport. These issues are solved by hybrid true potato seed. Hybrid potato can help respond to the challenges of poverty, food security and climate change, especially in remote and harsh environments. Hybrid breeding will increase the turnover of cultivars in such environments once new seed systems based on hybrid true potato seed are established and regulated. With faster breeding and multiplication systems, clean seed can be produced of hybrid cultivars that respond to rapidly changing agronomic and socio-economic conditions. Public-private partnerships are crucial to facilitate the development and dissemination of hybrid cultivars that are adapted to the specific conditions and needs of the diverse types of potato growers in different environments and markets. These partnerships depend on knowledge and technologies emerging from international agro-industrial innovation systems. But next to this dominant innovation route, alternative systems are feasible with more emphasis on food sovereignty in farming systems that are less corporate and technology-driven, and more diversity-oriented.