BREEDING ▶▶▶
True spud seed helps growers in warm climes
Growing potatoes from true seed offers farmers in Africa and Asia a more affordable way of establishing crops. Future Farming looks at how the first company in the Western world to market true potato seed hopes to enter this market
BY JAN ENGWERDA M
ost potatoes grown in the West are clones established from certified seed potatoes, but this is not always an option for
farmers in warmer climes, who instead face using poor-quality seed often carrying disease. Starting with healthy, disease-free seed
potatoes is essential for avoiding seed-borne disease that can devastate crops. However, in some parts of the world,
certified stock is only available by importing from overseas. Tubers are bulky and perishable, which means the transport costs of importing and delivering certified seed potatoes to farms are considerable, making them unaffordable or unavailable. Growers are, therefore, forced to use
potatoes they have grown themselves. Typically, the best potatoes are sold, leaving the poorer-quality tubers as seed. For these farmers, true seed may be the
Potato seed breeding programme
Bejo is a breeder of vegetable seed and Oliver F1 is the first potato variety to have come out of its breeding programme. When developing Oliver F1, Bejo used the same approach it uses for other types of vegetable seed, which involves creating homozygotic parent lines. These homozygotic lines are produced
through inbreeding and display a high degree of genetic uniformity. And by crossing these with one another,
uniform hybrid (F1) seeds are created that outperform their parents, thanks to the heterosis effect. After decades of breeding, Bejo has
30
successfully developed a tetraploid potato. Mr Van Bruchem explains: “True potato seed was developed using a method that is closely related to the way in which tomatoes are bred. “Breeding using true seed proceeds at a much faster pace than when breeding using seed potatoes.” The benefit is that when Bejo identifies a
successful cross variety, it can proceed quickly to seed production. In the case of cloned varieties of potato, they need to be propagated for a number of years before commercial seed potatoes can be tested and introduced to the market.
▶ FUTURE FARMING | 9 November 2017
One of the issues when growing potatoes from true seed is lower crop uniformity
solution, being disease-free and cheaper to transport for distributors. One Dutch breeder, Bejo Zaden, is looking
to sell into this market, after becoming the first company to gain plant breeder’s rights in the Netherlands. This was for the variety Oliver F1, a hybrid potato that can be grown directly from seed to produce potatoes for the table in just one season.
Breeders are testing seed priming to speed up germination
BEJO ZADEN
BEJO ZADEN
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
