The Agriculture and Food Ministry will tighten checks on imported seed potatoes, both for commercial crops and for seed production. Minister Plamen Abrovski promised this at a meeting with potato growers, the ministry's press office said.

"We need to improve conditions for producing quality seed potatoes in Bulgaria," Abrovski said.

Deputy ministers Prof. Dr. Krum Nedelkov and Yanislav Yanchev attended, as did engineer Bistra Pavlovska, executive director of the Executive Agency for Variety Testing, Field Inspection and Seed Control (IASAS). They discussed seed quality and how it is checked, crop protection, sales of the harvest and support for the sector in the next programming period.

There are suspicions that trading companies are buying poor-quality seed. Samples will therefore be taken and tested in parallel at the lab of the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency (BFSA) and in at least one lab abroad. The results will be for information only.

Under the new regulation on plant reproductive material, potatoes now fall under the Official Controls Regulation.

Growers complained that they struggle to find plant protection products, including some that have proved effective in practice but are now banned in the EU. They also have trouble selling their harvest.

Minister Abrovski said support for the sector should reflect the specific needs of potato growers and help them farm in a sustainable way.

From 6 to 12 October, the BFSA carried out extra checks on potatoes at five of the biggest retail chains in Bulgaria and in their warehouses. Inspectors checked whether the produce met EU and national law.