India Potato Summit 2026, Lucknow: Dates, Programme, Stalls and the UP Call to Growers

Uttar Pradesh grows about a third of India's potatoes, and for two days at the end of November the people who grow, store, process and sell them are being asked to sit in one hall.

The India Potato Summit 2026 — From Farm to Global Market runs on Thursday 26 and Friday 27 November 2026 at the Pluto Auditorium, Indira Gandhi Pratishthan, Lucknow. It is organised by the Centre for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD), a New Delhi non-governmental organisation registered in 2000, in association with the Department of Horticulture and Food Processing, Government of Uttar Pradesh. The format is three things at once: technical sessions, a technology exhibition, and scheduled business meetings between farmer producer organisations and industry.

What lifts it above an ordinary conference notice is a letter. On 16 October 2026 the Directorate of Horticulture, Uttar Pradesh wrote to every District Horticulture Officer in the state, to the superintendents of the government gardens at Rampur, Gorakhpur, Ayodhya and Jhansi, and to the Potato Development Officer at Farrukhabad. CARD had asked for 150 entrepreneurs and potato processors from the districts on each day, and the Director told the districts to publicise the summit and encourage their best potato growers, entrepreneurs and processors to be in Lucknow by 9 a.m. on both days. The letter also says the inauguration is proposed to be done by the state's Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Horticulture, Agricultural Marketing, Agricultural Foreign Trade and Agricultural Export.

In plain terms: a processor, seed company or machinery maker who takes a stall here can expect growers who were sent by their own district office, not just whoever walks in.

The two documentsRead the source, not our summaryThe organiser's full brochure — background, programme, who should attend and sponsorship — and the Directorate of Horticulture's letter of 16 October 2026 to the districts, in the original Hindi.Summit brochureUP Horticulture letterPDF · 1.2 MB and 0.1 MB

The brochure makes its case in one comparison, and it is worth reading slowly.

India harvests far more potato than the countries that make money from it. On the organisers' figures, drawn from FAO data for 2023, India produced about 60 million tonnes, the Netherlands 6.5 million and Belgium 4 million. Yet in calendar 2024 exports of frozen prepared potatoes, French fries included, earned Belgium about US$3.7 billion, the Netherlands US$2.7 billion and Canada US$2.1 billion — against roughly US$203 million for India. Belgium, with a fifteenth of India's crop, earned around eighteen times as much from this one product line.

India is moving. Government-reported exports of value-added potato products reached 2.77 lakh tonnes, worth US$289.4 million, in 2025-26, the brochure notes. But the same year showed the other side of a big crop: in April 2026 the Centre approved procurement of 20 lakh tonnes of potatoes in Uttar Pradesh under the Market Intervention Scheme because prices had collapsed. And the International Potato Center's South Asia Regional Centre at Agra, approved in June 2025, gives research a base in the same state.

That is the summit's argument: the problem is no longer how much India grows, but who buys it, in what form, and at what price.

Uttar Pradesh produced 20.4 million tonnes of potato in 2024-25, about 34.8% of the national crop and the largest of 29 reporting states.

That works out at 118.2 quintals an acre, a figure we derive from the published area and production because the department publishes no yield series for this crop. It is an average across every grower; what one acre gives depends on variety, season, irrigation and soil.

Compiled by IndianAgri from Horticulture Statistics Division, Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Government of India. Every figure on this page carries its originating department, its estimate round and the date we took it — see the full potato series, six years deep, by state.

The organisers publish a provisional two-day programme; speakers and final timings are still to be confirmed.

Day 1 — Thursday 26 November. Registration and exhibition from 9:00, the inaugural session and an Uttar Pradesh perspective at 10:00, then a plenary on global, Indian and UP potato production and market links. The afternoon runs three working sessions back to back:

• Session I — quality seed, processing varieties and climate-resilient production
• Session II — cold storage, pack-houses and post-harvest management
• Session III — potato processing, value addition and enterprise investment

It closes with FPO–industry business meetings in the exhibition from 16:45, and a day-one review.

Day 2 — Friday 27 November. From 9:30, with a business meeting desk open alongside registration:

• Session IV — quality standards, export readiness and phytosanitary requirements
• Session V — FPO aggregation, buyer requirements and supply agreements
• Session VI — potato product development and market opportunities
• Session VII — enterprise finance, NABARD and bank support, and government schemes
• Investment roundtable — processing plants, pack-houses and cold-storage conversion

The summit ends with an action-planning session on demonstrations and projects, and the valedictory at 17:00. The organisers say the intended outputs are buyer requirements, project interests, assessment needs and agreed follow-up contacts — a useful test of whether the two days were worth it.

The brochure lists twelve kinds of participant. Grouped by what each would come for:

• Growers and FPOs — buyers' specifications, aggregation and supply agreements, and the finance session if a pack-house or store is on the plan
• Seed companies — the variety and seed session, and the growers the districts are sending
• Processors of chips, fries, flakes and starch — contract supply, and the export and phytosanitary session
• Cold storage, logistics, grading, packing and testing firms — the post-harvest session and the storage-conversion roundtable
• Machinery, fertiliser and crop-protection companies — an exhibition audience of growers who were invited by name
• Banks and financial institutions — the finance session and the investment roundtable
• Exporters and traders, and government and research institutions

The discussion areas the organisers name are practical rather than grand: reliable seed and varieties matched to the buyer, grading and temperature control so a potato still meets the specification on the day of sale, heat and disease risk, a role for women, young farmers and trained agri-entrepreneurs, and credit — NABARD refinance, bank lending and subsidies for processing units, cold stores, pack-houses and FPO-led enterprises.

For companies the summit is sold in five ways. The figures are the organisers', as printed in the brochure:

Every sponsor tier also puts a catalogue or leaflet in each delegate kit, with the copies supplied by the sponsor. Title and Gold sponsors are acknowledged at both the inaugural and the concluding sessions; Silver and Associate at the concluding session.

Delegates register through a QR code printed on the back page of the brochure; the brochure does not state a delegate fee, so ask the organisers before you travel.

Summit brochureIndia Potato Summit 2026, all six pagesThe organisers' background note, the full programme, the twelve participant groups, every sponsorship tier and the delegate registration QR code.Download the brochurePDF · 1.2 MB

The brochure also prints the organiser's bank account for payment. We have deliberately not reproduced it here: confirm payment details with CARD directly, by phone, before transferring any money.

For participation, exhibition and sponsorship the organisers list:

• Shobhit Shrivastava, Regional Director, CARD — +91 96213 61577
• M. S. Khan, Nodal Officer — +91 99972 86694, shakeel@card.org.in
• Arindam Singha Roy, Executive Director, CARD — +91 92892 77447
• CARD head office, B-Wing, 2nd Floor, Naurang House, K.G. Marg, New Delhi 110001 — 011-41501465, card.org.in

Growers in Uttar Pradesh have a shorter route: the District Horticulture Officer in your district received the Directorate's letter and has been asked to send growers and processors to Lucknow.

Lucknow is not the season's only potato meeting. The Global Potato Summit 2026 follows at Gandhinagar on 16 and 17 December — our listing has the details. The two are different animals: Lucknow is a state-backed meeting built around Uttar Pradesh's growers and FPOs, Gandhinagar a trade summit for the processing and seed industry. For the state-by-state picture behind both, see Uttar Pradesh's share of India's potato crop on our sister site IndianPotato, and India's frozen fries exports for 2025-26 for the export side.