How do small potatoes counterattack into "grain" in China?

Potatoes have been a home-cooked dish on the dining table of Chinese people for hundreds of years. However, since the beginning of this year, as our country has proposed to expand the planting area of potato and let it gradually become a staple crop to ensure national food security, the humble potato has begun to come to the stage and attracted much attention from the public and the outside world.

At the World Potato Congress held in Yanqing, Beijing from the 28th to the 30th, many potato industry experts and enterprises said that China's potato staple food products and industries have a broad market and great potential for development. however, there are still many shortcomings, such as lack of improved varieties, low level of production and utilization, high processing cost and so on. It takes painstaking efforts to make potatoes really change from "food" to "grain".

When potatoes are used as grain, is there not enough food?

At the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Agriculture's plan to promote the staple food of potatoes suddenly doubled the value of this affordable and homely ingredient. During this World Potato Congress, the Ministry of Agriculture once again stated that it will speed up the development of potato staple food products and industrialization, promote the transformation of potato from non-staple food consumption to staple food consumption, and make potatoes attract more attention. Relevant experts believe that behind the development of potato staple food products may be a major change in China's food security pattern for thousands of years-potato may become the fourth largest staple grain variety in China after the three staple grain varieties of wheat, rice and corn. At the same time of concern, many people also wonder: does using potatoes as food mean that there is not enough food in our country?

In fact, data from the Ministry of Agriculture show that in the past 10 years, China's grain production has increased year after year, and the supply is adequate. In 2014, national grain production achieved "11 consecutive increases", reaching a record 607.1 million tons. Although the warehouse is full, the demand for grain continues to increase due to factors such as population growth and the rapid progress of urbanization, and the future situation of grain supply and demand is still not optimistic. It is estimated that by 2020, China's grain demand will increase by more than 100 billion jin.

Under the rigid demand of grain, potatoes with many advantages, such as wide adaptability, cold and drought tolerance, water saving and fertilizer saving, are favored. Last year, China's potato planting area reached 5570 thousand hectares, with a fresh potato output of more than 95 million tons, accounting for about 1/4 of the world's total. China has become the largest country in potato production and consumption in the world.

According to the plan of the Ministry of Agriculture, in the future, the potato planting area will be expanded according to local conditions, and without squeezing the three staple grains, the potato area will be expanded to 150 million mu and the yield per mu will be increased to more than 2 tons. It is predicted that the potato will provide 400 billion jin of grain after it becomes the staple grain in the future.

"in addition to being adaptable and tolerant to hunger and satiety, potatoes also have more comprehensive and balanced nutrition than any other food crop. it contains 18 kinds of amino acids needed by the human body as well as large amounts of cellulose and trace elements." Xie Conghua, a professor at Huazhong Agricultural University and an expert on potato research, said, "making potatoes a staple grain will provide more security for China's food security and make people eat healthier."

How many hurdles do potatoes have to go through from non-staple food to staple food?

From non-staple food to staple food, it means processing potatoes into steamed bread, noodles, rice noodles and other staple food products. However, the reporter found that this involves potato breeding and staple food product research and development, cultivation production and processing technology research and development, quality control system and other links. At present, there are still many constraints in our country.

First of all, due to the lack of improved varieties, there are few professional varieties suitable for processing whole flour and the quality is unstable.

Potato flour is the "total nutritional powder" obtained by dehydration and drying of potato, which is equivalent to the "flour" of potato. It is a high-quality grain with comprehensive nutrition and easy storage, which can not deteriorate for 15 years. However, although there are many varieties of potatoes, only a few with high dry matter content can be processed into whole flour.

"for many years, we have imported potato chips and French fries, but we cannot make them at home. One of the important reasons is that the varieties are not good." Liang Xisen, chairman of Hisen Potato Industry Group, the largest potato company in China, said, "No matter how good the variety is, it has been degraded in the last two years, so it is necessary to cultivate generations of excellent seeds through scientific and technological research and development in order to increase production."

According to the investigation of the vegetable and Flower Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, at present, there are only a few potato varieties with suitable characteristics of staple food development, and the special varieties for fried food processing and whole flour processing are still imported from abroad. Different staple food products have different requirements for potato varieties, so it is the key to cultivate more varieties of different ecological types and suitable for different staple food products.