Successes Story

Mr. Ubaidullo Nazriev, a farmer from village Chapaev, jamoat Rudaki, Vaksh district, Khatlon province, was born in 1954. He is an accountant-financial specialist with a big family of 17 members, including 8 grandchildren (Photo 8). He owns 2.3 ha of land, producing mostly cotton. A small area was cultivated under potato with unknown variety procured on the local fresh market.

Mr. Nazriev became a project beneficiary in 2015 and started producing potato by using of CIP varieties and innovative potato production technologies. That same year, his potato productivity increased by 53%, thanks to the high productivity and resistance of CIP varieties. As a result, his income also increased.

Since 2016 he started selling potato on the market, as his family’s consumption was fully satisfied and potato was available for sale. Mr. Nazriev’s high-quality seed potato costs are much higher, but has brought in additional income and has had very positive impact on his family’s economic situation. After introduction of the technique to artificially break dormancy of newly harvested potato, Mr. Nazriev solved the no. 1 problem in potato production, as seed potato is a big deficit in the second growing season. Accordingly, he received additional income from double-cropping through potato production in the second growing season.

After 3 years of working with CIP potatoes, Mr. Nazriev decided to become a seed producer, because during last three years, he found that potato seed production has become highly profitable by using resistant

varieties, high-quality seeds, and innovative technologies. To support him, in 2017 CIP created a storage facility (cool rooms equipped with the CoolBot) for treating potato seed to artificially break dormancy at his farm. To create full value chain of seed potato production, CIP established a demo plot of commercial potato production in Khatlon at Mr. Nazriev’s farm. The advantages of introduced innovations will be commercialized through scalingup of introduced varieties and technologies that bring high profits to beneficiary farmers (photos 9 and 10).

Mr. Nazriev has also attended several trainings on table and seed potato production. He increased his own skills in this sector and now provides consultancy service to other farmers in the region.

On his farm 2,368  m² land was cultivated under CIP potato and innovative technologies; 5.127 MT of potato was harvested, from which 2.5 MT was sold for 2 TJS and 513 kg (10%) was kept as seed for next growing year and 2.115 MT used as food for family. Mr. Nazriev’s family got 10,254 TJS ($1,367.20) total income from potato production. His farm can be seen as model farm of successful potato value chain in Khatlon Province.