Sri Lanka alone had the lion s share 68.9 per cent in the total export. As for seed potato export, the Netherlands dominates the world seed potato export market. During 1998, it exported over 226 thousand tonnes of seed potato to 78 countries. The Netherlands, the USA and Canada are the world leaders in the production and export of processed potato products. In the USA over 60 per cent of potato production is processed, while in India we have an installed capacity to process only 0.3 per cent of our potato output in the organised sector.
Every country is concerned to ensure that the consumers are supplied with food that is safe to eat.
The sanitary and phytosanitary or SPS measures are set by the WTO to ensure that strict health and safety regulations are not being used as an excuse for protecting domestic producers. In this perspective, utmost stress is laid on quality production for farm products in these days of globalisation of agriculture. For various reasons, false or true, it is widely held that the farm produce coming from the developing countries falls short of international quality standards. Potato output in the country should be adjudged on the touchstone of different quality parameters. In India, most potatoes are grown in winter under short-day conditions and harvested from January to March when their is no fresh harvest of potato in most parts of northern hemisphere making it a strategic crop from export point of view.