Potato Review

www.potatoreview.com POTATO REVIEW JULY/AUGUST 2021 35 BLIGHT consecutive years of eld trials to nd those that meet the demands of any market segments. On average, only three to four new varieties will make it to market each year.” Putting a price on this work is di cult, but by dividing the R&D budget by the number of new varieties the company brings to market, Sjefke gives an indication that it costs about €1 million per variety. “ ere is, of course, no guarantee that if you spend this money you will have a marketable variety at the end of the decade,” he said. e work for the seed breeder doesn’t stop here. Once a new variety is found, it needs to be multiplied for sale and heavily supported during its early years in the marketplace. Agronomy for profit Nick Taylor, with 150-200ha of potatoes on his 1,000ha farm in Shropshire, is the largest organic root vegetable grower in the UK, and is passionate about the potential of new varieties. “Customer requirements are getting higher and higher. Any visible damage pests and diseases cause is not acceptable anymore. So we’ve got to come up with solutions and variety choice is a huge part of that,” he said. “ ere have always been varieties out there that can side-step these issues, the problem has been that they aren’t palatable or aesthetically pleasing to consumers.” Nick has been running trials professionally, with Produce Solutions, for the past ve years. “We tend to grow new varieties in very small plots rst. In the second year we’ll do a bigger plot trial before taking it to a eld scale trial in the third year. It’s about ensuring the varieties are robust, understanding how they perform in our speci c eld conditions and developing the agronomic knowledge to optimise marketable yield.” Last year Nick ran eld-scale trials with two of Agrico’s ‘Next Generation’ varieties, Twinner and Twister. “We grew 1 ha of each and they are proving to be very promising. Externally and internally they look really good, which is so important for the retail market. We just need to learn a little more about Twinner and its nitrogen requirements. It’s a very quick-growing variety and knowing how to best manage that to get optimum yields is something we’re still working on. But it looks beautiful. Its shape, its skin- nish, its quality and its resistance to blight come together to make it a very exciting variety.” Not all variety trials are a success and when they fail it is costly, as Nick recalls: “ e investments are big and the risks are also big. Last year for example, we trialled a variety that has done very well in France. We put over 10ha in the ground and the internal damage from pests meant the whole crop was unsaleable. We didn’t sell a single spud and with costs ranging from £5,000-10,000 per hectare, it was an expensive trial.” Calculating the cost While it may be both expensive and time consuming to bring new, blight-resistant varieties to market, there are multiple bene ts. For conventional growers the cost- savings can be signi cant. Agrico, in combination with partners in the Netherlands is exploring how best to exploit the resulting characteristics with conventional farmers. “We’ve had three growing seasons of experimental work with these varieties in conventional conditions,” explains Sjefke. “We’re proving conventional farmers, supported by decision-making tools, can three to seven blight sprays per crop. Where conditions are hotter and drier, then most sprays can be saved. “With potentially resistance-breaking isolates tending to emerge later in the season, continuing with late- season fungicide applications help to protect and preserve the biology.” At e James Hutton Institute David is exploring how host resistance can optimise IPM strategies. “We acknowledge that we’re not replacing fungicides anytime soon but what we want to do is use resistance and fungicides together to protect one another,” said David.