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Sitting in a Global GAP-certified village in Gujarat's potato belt, the man steering HyFun Foods' agribusiness arm HyFarm makes an unlikely-sounding wager rising temperatures in Uttar Pradesh, long seen as a problem for Indian agriculture, will quietly transform the country's largest table potato state into its next French fry powerhouse. "I could see in the last six-seven years, the solid percentile in UP is increasing because of temperatures going up in that particular area," said Soundarradjane S, CEO of Gujarat-based HyFarm Foods. "Clearly, we see UP in the next three to five years will emerge as the next processing hub," he told PTI in an interview. The logic is agronomic. A good French fry needs high dry matter content -- what the industry calls "solid percentile" -- ideally between 20 and 24 per cent, a range that keeps the fry firm and crispy. Achieving it requires long sunshine hours during the day followed by chilled temperatures at night, a diurnal fluctuation that ...