Wild potatoes hold the secret — and 1,000 Kenyan farmers will help prove it

A Kenyan potato farmer can lose a third of her harvest to late blight, the same disease behind the Irish Potato Famine, and up to 80% to tiny worm-like pests in the soil. This week the Crop Trust and the International Potato Center expanded a breeding programme that borrows toughness from the potato's wild relatives — plants that learned to survive heat, drought and disease long before farming existed. Fifty-four promising new potato lines will move through trials, with 500 to 1,000 farmers, over half of them women, testing them in real fields. Potatoes are Kenya's second most important staple after maize, supporting about 3.3 million jobs. The goal is concrete: at least one new variety that shrugs off blight and pests, released to the farmers who need it.

SDG 2 · Zero hunger — Mechanism: tech innovation