Does climate change also have an influence on variety development? TRADE AND MARKET I NG Lars Naested (l), Danespo: ‘We’re looking for varieties that can cope with a bit of drought or high temperatures' Lars Naested, responsible for potato breeding at Danespo in Give, Denmark, immediately starts laughing when asked about climate change. His company has just started doing tests related to this issue. It’s a very new breeding project that Danespo has set up, together with four other breeding companies, to monitor the root growth of plants. ‘Grass seed and cereal breeding companies are also involved’, says Lars Naested. ‘As Danespo, we’ve set up a breeding trial at our joint research station to monitor potato varieties in dry growing conditions. It’s a trial that enables us to monitor the growth of the root system and see exactly how this develops. There are cameras that record the development of the root system during an entire growing season. We not only monitor the root quantity that a variety is developing, but also the growing power, which means how deep and how wide the roots grow. With the results of this trial, we hope to find the right hybrid varieties for robust seed that can deal with a bit of drought or high temperatures. Drought resistance will become an increasingly necessary quality to continue to grow potatoes successfully considering the climatic changes. Moreover, we see an increase in salinisation in many cultivation areas, and that’s why we test our varieties more and more for salt tolerance. And if it involves growing in cold or very hot conditions, we already have a concept of that in our breeding work. We’ve been trialling varieties for a wide range of climatic conditions in the various regions in the world for years now. This has resulted in some very robust varieties that keep on giving high yields, whether conditions were dry, wet, hot or sharply fluctuating. Two examples are the Fakse, a table potato for peeling and the Royal, a chipper. Both produce high, stable yields while needing relatively little water and also relatively little nitrogen. Stefaan Delmeire (r), BBS: ‘Stable varieties with reliable yields are the future’ ‘I can give a fairly short answer to this. We do nothing else but test our varieties for changing climatic conditions. One of the breeding and multiplication stations of the German company Norika, where we buy our varieties, is situated in Poland only 10 kilometres from the Russian border. The weather conditions can be quite extreme, from cold winters to very dry and very hot summers.’ Stefaan Delmeire, from the Belgian seed potato trading company Binst Breeding and Selection in Grimbergen, answers in one breath, without having to think about it. ‘The positive result in a season like this one has become very clear. None of our varieties have suffered any problems such as growth cracks or extreme blue discolouration. In good yielding years they may not be among the top, but taken over a number of years they are, and in bad climatic years they do much better. In a good year, non-Norika varieties yield 55 to 60 tonnes per hectare and Norika varieties like the chipper Pirol 50 to 55 tonnes. In not such a good year, like the one we’ve just had, the Norika variety only made 48 tonnes per hectare, while a non-Norika variety barely does 30 to 35 tonnes. In our view, stable varieties with reliable yields are the future. I think that growers, packagers and French-fry manufacturers will start realising this now as well. But last year, they weren’t interested yet. French-fry manufacturers in Belgium, for example, were only interested in the Fontane and had almost sanctified it, practically closing their doors to all other varieties. After the growth crack problems of last season they’ll definitely change their attitude now.’ Potato World 2017 • number 2 37 Pagina 36
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