Potato Review

www.potatoreview.com GROWERS UPDATE varieties Actrice, Bernice, Lotus, Cereza and Metro along with advanced unnamed clones. e pallida resistant chipping variety, Cronos, from the breeder Danespo in Denmark will feature in its french fry demonstration. Grampian Growers will also show varieties from the French company, vanRijn France. At Coldham Grampian Growers will launch the variety Iodea in the UK. Iodea, from the French breeder SIPRE (Comite Nord, Fr) represented by vanRijn France, is a salad potato with rostochiensis and pallida resistance. e co- operative says the variety produces high tuber numbers with excellent skin nish and has superb eating quality. Small quantities of Iodea seed were imported by Grampian Growers into England from France for commercial production this year. Plantlets have been imported by Grampian Growers to SASA in Edinburgh for quarantine and testing. Mini tuber production will begin in Scotland during 2021 with seed production of Iodea in Scotland in the next two to three years. Tuberzone project Increased use of technology has enabled grower- members to plan earlier this and make better predictions, according to the co-operative. Last year, Grampian Growers teamed up with SAC Consulting and SoilEssentials in a project designed to use the new cloud-based model Tuberzone, which predicts haulm destruction dates by monitoring the crop throughout the season using three years of satellite data, crop boundaries, UAV imagery, weather data, soil moisture data and test digs. e Tuberzone KTIF (Knowledge Transfer Innovation Fund) project was funded by the Scottish Government’s SRDP Programme and ran for one year from May 2019. All 30 of Grampian Growers’ Gemson growers were involved in this project, with each grower having all their Gemson crops inputted into the model, which totalled 66 crops. e project aimed to encourage greater use of the technology to improve seed potato production e ciency, product quality and supply chain information. A survey and a focus group also looked at worked and what could have done better. e project has been a turning point for growers who were initially sceptical about letting technology make decisions for them in eld, while having this information available prior to harvest allowed Grampian Growers to plan earlier in the season and provided a guide of the total estimated tonnage from all crops as well as an estimate percentage in the saleable size bracket of 25x55mm. “ e results of the project found that the model can predict almost all yield and size fractions within 10% accuracy in commercial settings. Whilst this gure was an excellent result, we believe this gure could have been even less if area measurements per crop were recorded by growers more accurately, which was another discovery of the project,” a spokesman said, adding: “We believe that these new technologies will play an ever- increasing part in the industry as times move on and growers look for innovative tools to back up their decision making.” Since commercial release in 2007, Grampian Growers’ variety Gemson has gone from strength to strength in the expanding baby potato sector, with 7,000 tonnes of sales annually by Grampian Growers. Trial and commercial eld scale results have shown that Gemson can produce 30% - 60% greater yield than Maris Peer in the desirable under 45mm fraction with lower outgrades and excellent results for both growers and packers. Caption: Caption: www. tongengineering .com e: sales@tongengineering.com t: +44 (0)1790 752771 > Gentle Handling > Advanced Design > Intelligent Control THE COMPLETE SOLUTION Designed with you in mind