Abstract:

Potato is one of the fastest growing major food security crop in the developing world with important economic impact on many resource-poor farming families. Many factors limit production and profitability, with hundreds of millions of shillings spent yearly on fungicides alone, but little is known about direct losses, with experts agreeing that they are variable and frequently significant. It is estimated that 82 %, 71 %, and 61 % of potato grown in Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia, respectively, are for sale and the farming systems are quite intensive and diversified (Gildemacher, 2012). In Uganda, losses caused by diseases such as late blight (Phytophthora infestans (Mont.) de Bary) are high, ranging from 40 % to 60 % of the total production and can reach 100 % if infection occurs early in the season when climatic conditions are favorable for disease development. According to Okonya et al., (2016), the constraints to potato production and marketing as ranked by stakeholders include diseases as the most important, followed by insect pests and price fluctuation for ware potato was ranked third most important constraint. Low market prices for ware potato was at fourth, late maturity and short dormancy of some potato varieties, tuber damage by rodents and tuber damage by millipedes were registered.