Kenya tries to put every apical-cuttings trainer on the same page

A seed potato technology can only scale as fast as the people trained to run it correctly, and in Kenya that has been the bottleneck for Rooted Apical Cuttings (RACs). The technique is gaining ground as an efficient, cost-effective route to quality seed potato, but without a single agreed set of training materials, screenhouse operators, extension officers and youth entrepreneurs across the country have effectively been learning different versions of the same process.

On 29 June 2026, the National Potato Council of Kenya (NPCK) convened a consultative meeting through the Kenya Sustainable Potato Initiative (KSPI), supported by AGRA, specifically to review and harmonise the seed potato production training materials for RACs. The problem, in NPCK's own framing, was that a lack of harmonised materials and standardised operating procedures had made it difficult to guarantee consistency in training, screenhouse management and production practices — three areas that directly determine whether seed potato coming out of the RAC pipeline actually meets quality standards.

Who was in the room matters here. The meeting drew technical experts from the State Department for Agriculture, KEPHIS, the KALRO Potato Research Centre–Tigoni, FIPS-Africa and NPCK itself — putting the national regulator, the national research institute, a grassroots extension organisation and the government agriculture department alongside the seed potato council. Harmonised materials produced with that combination of institutional sign-off carry more weight across the value chain than a document authored by any single body alone, since each one touches a different part of certification, research or on-the-ground extension.

The technical discussions moved through the full RAC production cycle — mother plant management, rooting and curing, field establishment, crop management and screenhouse operations — with participants also flagging the need for standardised operating procedures to reinforce quality assurance across the seed potato chain. This isn't a rebranding exercise; it targets the specific technical points in the process where inconsistent practice is most likely to produce weaker seed stock.

Once finalised, the materials are meant to serve trainers, extension officers, seed producers and youth entrepreneurs engaged in RAC production. Naming youth entrepreneurs alongside the more expected trainers and extension officers signals that RAC is being positioned as an entry point for new commercial players in seed production, not just an internal fix for existing institutions — NPCK frames the expected payoff as stronger technical capacity, wider adoption of RAC technology, and improved access to quality seed potato for smallholder farmers.

The meeting leaned heavily on public-private collaboration as the mechanism for strengthening Kenya's seed system, with NPCK describing KSPI as an ongoing vehicle for promoting innovation, building technical capacity and supporting sustainable seed potato production. Whether the harmonised materials deliver on consistency will depend on how widely and faithfully they're adopted once finalised — a step still pending.