The potato is taking root in Nepal like never before, and Kulbir Vyanjankar will be the first to tell you why. This 45-year-old farmer from Sankhamul in Kathmandu Valley is enthusiastic about the potato variety known as "MS-91", which allows him to have two harvests instead of one. Moreover, he can use small easily transported seedlings rather than whole seed potatos. Another important plus is that he can now grow varieties that are resistant to disease. For his agricultural leap forward, Vyanjankar credits scientist Saman Bahadur Rajbhandari.
Rajbhandari, 52, is the Deputy Director of the Government's Department of Botany and it is his team that over the last five years developed a novel method of growing potato seedlings in the laboratory and transferring it to the field. A graduate of Lucknow University, with a PhD in tissue culture from the University of Wales, Rajbhandari received the prestigious King Birendra Science and Technology Academy Award for his pioneering work in developing high-yielding plants, including potatos, through the culture of cell tissues.
Rajbhandari says he began work on the potato believing that tissue culture could provide enormous opportunity for developing agriculture and forestry in the region. "In Nepal, we already have enough trained people to perform research in this field and we are not really that far behind the developed countries in tissue culture work."
The technique perfected by Rajbhandari was to grow potato seedlings in the lab and then to transplant them outdoors in sand so that rooting and "hardening" of the stem take place directly in the fields. The seedlings are then ready to be transplanted yet again in the farmer's plot. Compared to lab intensive work elsewhere, Rajbhandari's technique produces seedlings at very low cost. More importantly, the seedlings turn out to be hardy and adaptable to new soil. An Indian biotechnology company has shown interest in importing the techniques developed by Rajbhandari's team, which works out of a herbarium in Godavari on the outskirts of Kathmandu.