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French seed potatoes under Agronomic Board spotlight

French seed potatoes under Agronomic Board spotlight

The Namibian Agronomic Board (NAB) held a French seed potato harvesting observation day at Oldsmith Farm in the Groootfontein district on 7 October.

The French seed potato trails project is a collaboration between the NAB, Comptoir du Plant and the Namibian Embassy in France for testing the adaptability of 6 French seed potato varieties under local environmental conditions.

During the harvesting observation day, one of the 13 participating farmers, Cobus Coetzee displayed his potato produce and various other farmers were invited to observe the products and harvesting process.

“In April 2021, we received 25 tons of French seed potato varieties from Comptoir du Plant for trial purposes and another 0.8 tons sourced from South African seed potato varieties commonly grown in Namibia for use as a benchmark, for comparison purposes,” they explained.

They added that they then distributed the 25 tons, 1000 bags of 25kg from France, plus the 0.8 tons, 32 bags of 25kg from South Africa of seed potatoes to the selected participating farmers in Namibia.


 

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Mandisa Rasmeni

Mandisa Rasmeni has worked as reporter at the Economist for the past five years, first on the entertainment beat but now focussing more on community, social and health reporting. She is a born writer and she believes education is the greatest equalizer. She received her degree in Journalism at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) in June 2021. . She is the epitome of perseverance, having started as the newspaper's receptionist in 2013.