Potato Review

www.potatoreview.com POTATO REVIEW MARCH/APRIL 2022 33 VARIETIES R ISING energy prices of recent months are also leading to significantly increasing costs in potato production. The energy- intensive production of nitrogen fertilisers in particular is increasingly burdening the prices for mineral fertilisers. This does not remain without effect on potato production. Alongside rising costs, increasing demands from the side of environmental and groundwater protection are leading to calls for higher nutrient efficiency and a wide ecological spread of modern varieties. Europlant, a Lower Saxony company with its head office in Lueneburg, is claiming to meet these requirements as part of its Grow green sustainability offensive. For many years now, the focus of its variety development has been on improving natural resistance to potato diseases and pests, increasing resilience to environmental factors and enhancing cultivation efficiency combined with stable varietal characteristics in terms of taste and appearance. The result of this work is a selection of special varieties for low input production. The company claims its varieties for low input production are very efficient at acquiring and converting nutrients, enabling them to achieve a high yield of consistent quality with a reduced supply of nutrients. Selections made for low input production “By cultivating of our innovative varieties, plant cultivation measures can be reduced. This protects the environment and the farmer’s wallet,” said Jörg Eggers, Managing Director of EUROPLANT Pflanzenzucht GmbH. Currently, 17 potato varieties are assigned to the low input program. “We distinguish between two groups: Potato varieties of the PREMIUM category require 12.5 % less nitrogen fertiliser, in GOLD category it is even 25 %,” said Jörg. ROBUST VARIETIES INDICATOR DEVELOPED MEIJER Potato, which develops andmarkets potato varieties for worldwidemarkets, believes robust potato varieties are necessary to provide a growing world populationwith healthy food, even in the face of climate change and, with that inmind, has launched a digital robustness index with seven key indicators of different variety characteristics, to objectively compare their robustness. These include marketable yield (including washability and scab tolerance); climate adaptation (based on, among other things, the dry matter content and the yield in different climates); soil adaptation; crop protection efficiency concerns (eg late blight and virus resistant varieties that require less crop protection products; fertiliser use efficiency; water efficiency concerns; storability (ie varieties with a long dormancy period and varieties with a good frying colour throughout the storage season). The potato variety characteristics used are based on data collected over the years in Meijer Potato’s breeding program. “By varying the importance of the seven robustness items in the digital tool, the customer can select the most suitable variety in a more targeted manner together with Meijer Potato. The right variety choice is becoming increasingly important because cultivation is becoming more expensive, legislation stricter and the market more demanding,” said a company spokesman. The premium varieties include, for example, the mainly firm cooking Danina, the firm cooking Simonetta (variety of the year 2021/2022) and the floury cooking Karelia. Omega and Rumba as processing varieties also have a nitrogen fertiliser requirement reduced by 12.5 %. The mainly firm cooking varieties Coronada, Floridana and Jelly as well as Annalena, Bernina and Torenia from the firm cooking segment are assigned to the GOLD category.