Ciego de Ávila: More than 1,000 hectares of potatoes will be planted

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Ciego de Ávila: Plantarán más de 1 000 hectáreas de papa

Potato planting intensifies in Ciego de Ávila after the arrival in the province of imported seed, with which the largest number of hectares (ha) planned for the campaign will be covered.

Raúl Monguía Rodríguez, specialist in the cultivation of this food from the provincial delegation of Agriculture, informed the Cuban News Agency that, of the planning 1,130 ha, they were planted with the national seed 110 of them, which already receive the complement nitrogenous (urea) and almost all are with maximum foliage.

He specified that the seven varieties of the seed, coming from Holland, have a very good potential productive level, and although some still do not emit the buds to be able to be sown, the work is speeded up with those that are ready because in April, when harvest them, there is a risk of being affected by rain.

Monguía Rodríguez added that in total there are 450 hectares populated and valued very positively the preparation of the land in the entities that intervene in the campaign. Given the limitation of tires, tractors and batteries that influenced the sequence of that work and of the delay due to the rains, they received the support of others from the agricultural sector with their teams.

Regarding the irrigation guarantee, Monguía Rodríguez stated that, together with the Department of Irrigation of the University of Ciego de Ávila Máximo Gómez Báez, they enlist and certify the electric pivot machines, most of them with more than 18 years of operation.

He pointed out that the first irrigation (mine) is carried out between three and four days before sowing the seed, to ensure a bed of optimum humidity that favors the sprouting of the tuber. Later, the irrigation is light from the time it begins to germinate until 25 or 30 days; and from there the water levels to the plant are higher.

In this campaign, the prediction is to reach 22,400 tons (t), with average yields of 19 t per ha.

Some 1,540 tons of the Atlas, Manitou, Romano and Alquete varieties will be left for seed for the upcoming 2022-2023 stage, which will cover some 370 ha.

The destinations of each harvest of this tuber, highly demanded by Cubans, are the consumption of the population, not only from Ciego de Ávila, but also from other provinces, as it is a food that is included in the national balance, and for seed from the other campaign.

It also reaches the industry, in this case the Agro-industrial Ceballos, to make the pre-fried potato that is sold in the border market.

The various crop companies Arnaldo Ramírez, El Mambí and La Cuba are involved in the campaign, with their Agricultural Production Cooperatives Paquito González, Revolución de Octubre and 26 de Julio; and two individual producers, one from the Credit and Services Crops Company Máximo Gómez, in La Cuba, and another from El Vaquerito, in Venezuela.