Cabinet approves establishment of International Potato Center’s South Asia regional centre at Agra

The cabinet, which met under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved a proposal from the Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare to establish the CSARC.

“The major objective of this investment is to increase food and nutrition security, farmers income, and job creation by improving potato and sweet potato productivity, post-harvest management and value-addition,” said an official statement issued after the cabinet meeting.

“The potato sector in India has the potential to generate significant employment opportunities in production sector, processing sector, packaging, transportation, marketing, value chain, etc. Hence, in order to untap and explore the huge potential in this sector, International Potato Centre (CIP)‘s south Asia regional Centre is being established at Singna, Agra, Uttar Pradesh. High-yielding, nutrient and climate-resilient varieties of potato and sweet potato developed by CSARC will significantly accelerate the sustainable development of the potato and sweet potato sectors not only in India but in the South Asia region also through world-class science and innovation,” the statement added.

The decision follows a letter Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath wrote to Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan six months ago demanding the early establishment of a CIP regional centre in Agra.

An agriculture ministry delegation led by Agriculture Secretary Devesh Chaturvedi visited Peru recently. Potatoes are native to the Peruvian-Bolivian Andes in South America.

The entire project, to come up on 10 hectares of land provided by the UP government, will cost $20 million (about Rs 160 crore), of which India will contribute $13 million and the CIP $7 million, according to sources.

The CSARC will focus on the development of new varieties that are climate-resilient, disease-free, and suitable for processing, the sources added.

China set up a similar CIP centre, known as the China Center for Asia Pacific, in Yanqing, Beijing in 2017. It serves the entire East Asia and the Pacific region.

The CSARC will be the second major international agricultural research institution to set up operations in India, The regional centre of the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), established in Varanasi, was the first.

Two centres of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) work on tuber crops–the Shimla-based ICAR-CPRI (Central Potato Research Institute) working on potatoes and the Thiruvananthapuram-based ICAR-CTCRI (Central Tuber Crops Research Institute) working on sweet potato.

India ranks number two in potato production and consumption, after China. In 2020, China produced 78.24 million tonnes of potatoes and India 51.30 million tonnes of the crop, together accounting for over one-third of the global production of 359.07 million tonnes.

Uttar Pradesh (15 million tonnes), West Bengal (15 million tonnes), and Bihar (9 million tonnes) were the top three potato producers in India in 2020-21. Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Punjab also produce significant amounts of potatoes.