Starting the new season in Pakistan
This week the new growing season has started in Pakistan. Our salt tolerant potato-seeds will be planted by the local farmers working for Jaffer. For the Challenge 'Securing Water For Food' we, together with MetaMeta and Jaffer Brothers (Private) Limited, are testing the salt tolerance of potatoes on the saline fields in Pakistan. This is a 3 year program. In the first year we've successfully harvested saline potatoes. This 2nd year is all about upscaling. We've also registred the first 4 salt tolerant potato varieties for the national catalogue of varieties of Pakistan.
2 experts of Salt Farm Texel, Robin Konijn (CEO) and Jan Bakker (potato expert) arrived in Pakistan last Monday to guide the start of the planting of the salt tolerant potatoes and to discuss the business case. We are satisfied by the cooporation with Jaffer and the local farmers working on the saline fields.
Local farmers started the planting of the salt tolerant potato tubers this week.
Creating employment is being combined with securing enough food for the growing population of Pakistan by using the saline fields.
