Is climate change a topic for potato breeders? TRADE AND MARKETING well, is frost-resistant and has various resistances to nematodes and wart disease. tion in Southern Italy. During the day, temperatures can be as high as 40 degrees Celsius and during the night it can be freezing. These are extremes. You can run away from it, but you can also try to find answers, believes Bus. Breeder Smeenge has also found an answer, the SM 05-89-13, a cross that doesn’t get too upset by a spot of hot or cold weather. ‘A real hype’ Peter van Eerdt of Danespo is absolutely convinced that the current climate discussion is a real hype. ‘We used to have dry summers in the past and this year is just another one.’ He can only shrug his shoulders and leave it for what it is. What he does at the breeding station is ‘just develop varieties that give farmers higher incomes per hectare.’ The only way to help them with that is to provide stable varieties, in his view. ‘Always a reliable harvest that’s not susceptible to second growth, and characteristics such as resistance to a few degrees of frost, these are welcomed by the consumption grower. Danespo trials its breeding results in many locations in Europe, so that all weak aspects can be discovered. High temperatures, drought, pests and diseases, the crossings are subjected to all of them,’ explains Van Eerdt. ‘The only thing to do is to select with the greatest possible care, and if you’re lucky, you may get a variety that does well in the market.’ As an example of such a lucky strike, he points to the Royal. Van Eerdt calls it ‘a variety that just comes to you’. He claims that this is a particularly suitable variety for the chip industry. ‘The variety has a high yield, 60 tons per hectare is a practical reality, it has a low sugar content, stores ‘No leading role for the climate’ Schaap Holland BV participated for the first time this year in the official round of the varieties show. According to Hans Geling of that merchant company, this is because his company is predominantly involved in looking for varieties for themselves. ‘What’s most important is that we look for better varieties for our Potato Peeling Section. Additionally, we would like to introduce new varieties for our small packaging business. We also have export and chip varieties in our wide range. With our research into varieties, we specifically focus on added value. This means that varieties are preferably multi-purpose, so they must be suitable for two or more market segments. By doing it this way, you minimise the risk of failure.’ Things like climate change do not play an important part, claims Geling. ‘What is important is that a variety is stable in different types of soil and weather conditions. To this end, we trial our new varieties in different locations. What’s important for us is that yields are comparable, or, in other words, that all the trays of the various trial fields hold the same amounts of potatoes. This is better than having a variety with high yields in one year and very low in another. The most important Schaap variety, the Maritiema, fulfils these demands completely, says Geling. Also, the latest variety Lindita compares favourably. ● Jaap Delleman and Leo Hanse Potato World 2010 • number 3 23 Pagina 22
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