Abstract:The Ministry of Agriculture of the People’s Republic of China (MOA) has announced that potato will soon be the newest staple food in China. Potato tubers are a rich source of starch, high-quality protein, essential vitamins, minerals, and trace elements, but many problems need to be solved to upgrade potato culturally, technically, environmentally, and economically to a staple food status in China. Overcoming these problems requires the use of domestic and international experiences and technical strategies as references; expanding the potato-growing areas at the expense of the ecological environment is undesirable. Inner Mongolia, northwest China, and southwest China, the major potato production areas, are not suitable for continued expansion of the potato-growing areas because this process causes grassland desertification and soil erosion, and the government has proposed that some farmlands be returned to grasslands or forest. In southern China, cultivation of potatoes in fallow fields in winter is the most promising method for increasing China’s potato production and is worth promoting by the government. In addition, some technical issues need to be solved, such as how to develop potato into a Chinese traditional staple food, how to use dehydrated mashed potatoes as a semifinished food product, how to improve dry matter content of potato tubers, and how to process potato into a semifinished food product at a low temperature.
