After China, India set to get regional centre of Peru-based premier potato institute

It is learnt that the Union Cabinet is likely to soon approve a proposal of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare to set up the centre. The development comes months after Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath wrote to the Centre, seeking early establishment of a regional centre of the CIP in the district of Agra. Recently, an Agriculture Ministry delegation led by Devesh Chaturvedi, Agriculture Secretary, visited Peru.

Highlighting the delay in the establishment of the centre, Adityanath wrote a letter to Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on January 20. In the letter, Adityanath urged Chouhan to direct the officials concerned in his ministry to pave the way for the early establishment of the International Potato Center (CIP)- South Asia Regional Center at Singana, Agra.

The sources say that the project will be worth $20 million (about Rs 160 crore), of which India will contribute $13 million, while the remaining $7 million will be funded by CIP. The UP government has provided 10 hectares of land for the proposed Centre.

The CIP-SARC will work not only for UP but for the entire country and South Asia, said sources, adding that the proposed centre will focus on the development of new varieties, which are climate resilient, disease-free, and are suitable for processing. It will bring global science expertise, an extensive global innovation network and global genetic resources, said the sources.

The proposed centre in Agra comes 8 years after China set up a similar CIP centre. The CIP’s China centre, known as the China Center for Asia Pacific (CCCAP), was established in Yanqing, Beijing, in 2017. Apart from China, the centre serves the entire East Asia and the Pacific region.

Headquartered in Lima, Peru, the CIP was founded in 1971 as a research-for-development organisation with a focus on potato, sweet potato and Andean roots and tubers. The potato crop is native to the Peruvian-Bolivian Andes in South America.

The proposed CIP-SARC will be the second major international agricultural research institution to set up its operations in India. In 2017, the Agriculture Ministry supported the establishment of a regional centre of the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). The IRRI-SARC is established in Varanasi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency.

As of now, at least two different centres of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) work on tuber crops. While the Shimla-based ICAR-Central Potato Research Institute (CPRI) is working on potato, the Thiruvananthapuram-based ICAR-Central Tuber Crops Research Institute (CTCRI) is working on sweet potato.

China is the top potato producer and consumer in the world, and it is followed by India. In 2020, China’s potato production was recorded at 78.24 million tonnes, while India recorded a production of 51.30 million tonnes. Both countries accounted for over one-third of the global potato production (359.07 million tonnes).

In India, Uttar Pradesh (15 million tonnes), West Bengal (15 million tonnes), and Bihar (9 million tonnes) were the top three potato producers in 2020-21. The other states having significant potato production are Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Punjab.