Tigoni Mandate

Centre has a national mandate for potato research and development. The KALRO-Tigoni mandate also includes coordination of potato research throughout the country and the implementation of the research programme. The Centre has a regional mandate for floriculture whose research is coordinated from the KALRO Kandara.
 
Potato research: breeding; agronomy; crop protection; postharvest storage; food processing and socio-economics.
Floriculture: germplasm evaluation; agronomy, crop protection, postharvest handling, and marketing.
 
The programmes focus on the optimum utilization of all human and financial resources to enable both experienced and upcoming farmers to practice profitable and sustainable farming, while conserving the environment.  The research is demand-driven with particular focus on projects with potential for immediate adoption of the research findings by potato and flower farmers.  The Centre has developed a strong demand-oriented research tradition in solving production and postharvest problems encountered by the stakeholders. The Centre continues to develop and utilize novel research approaches such as tissue culture to support seed potato multiplication and development of quality potato varieties for the food processing industry in collaboration with traditional research partners.  Within these strategies, the Centre directly addresses other mandate issues such as product quality improvement, reduction of production costs, crop protection and development of improved strategies.