Insight of the market segmentation in tailoring potato varieties for Kenyan market: A snippet of stakeholder’s recommendation of major segments

Otieno, A.S., Nyongesa, W.M., Kelele, F.J., Namusonge, M., Mendes, T., Milic, D. 2024. Insight of the market segmentation in tailoring potato varieties for Kenyan market: A snippet of stakeholder’s recommendation of major segments. A Poster presented at the CGIAR Initiative on Market Intelligence WP1-WP2 Workshop, 14-18 October 2024, Harare, Zimbabwe.

In Kenya, potato is a key food security crop and continues to attract many stakeholders due to its versatile attributes as a cash crop and income earner. This calls for new breeder approaches that meets the needs of the various market segments. In order to bridge disconnect between the consumers and breeders, a stakeholder’s forum was established to tune the national breeding program and refine its pipeline to reflect the different specific market classes defined by stakeholders. This forum brought key players in the potato industry to decipher/deliberate on the key market segments in the potato industry in Kenya. There was a data collection tool was provided to stakeholders in the value chain (Researchers, Farmers, State agencies, Seed producers, Ministry of Agriculture staff, Processor, Traders and Consumers among others) to give feedback on the main market segments. Their feed-back was further refined and validated by the stakeholders at a follow-up workshop. The results identified 6 key market segments that were table white skin, table red skin produced under rain fed highland regions, processing red skin, processing white skin chipping varieties, processing red skin, processing white skin crisping all produced under rain-fed in the highlands regions of the country. These findings underscore the evolving needs of the key stakeholders in generating useful information and product profiles to guide the development of new varieties with desirable traits. This allowed the potato breeding program at Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO)- Tigoni to focus the breeding efforts toward the key segments recommended by the stakeholders. Therefore, this shows the need to continuously, involve the key stakeholder to identify and prioritize important traits for target markets to enhance uptake of new varieties.