PotatoEurope 2009 Restrain wins Innovation Award Focus on Actrice After the first Congress day, the PotatoEurope 2009 Innovation Award was handed to the Restrain Company Ltd in restaurant ’t Voorhuys in Emmeloord.The winning product, Restrain Generator, was chosen by the expert jury from no fewer than seventeen nominations. Dirk Garos from the Dutch representation of this company received this prestigious award from the hands of Ms Renée Bergkamp, director-general for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. The selection criteria that the jury used to choose a winner were the degree of innovation and inventiveness, and the market potential of the product or service. The jury also included the sustainability factor in its ruling. The winning product scored high on all accounts. No residue on the tuber After long consultations, the jury voted the Restrain Generator product as the winner from among all the entries. It is a sprout inhibitor based on the natural product ethylene. Ethylene does not leave residue on the tuber. The reason for the jury to reward this product with the first prize is, according to the jury’s report, that this product means a real breakthrough and it is an innovation the potato sector has been waiting for for many years. Especially in countries where seed and consumption potatoes are stored for a long time, a natural and environmentally-friendly sprout inhibitor is just what they need. Moreover, the product has been tested and approved by the Wageningen Board for the Authorisation of crop protection agents and biocides, which means it can also be used for organic potato crops And, last but not least, the product has a cost price that is comparable to chemical sprout inhibitors. In conclusion, Restrain Generator has a positive influence on the processing and export of potatoes. For this show, Agroplant had put an Actrice [actress] in the stand for the occasion. No, not an acting lady, but a brand-new potato variety named Actrice. ‘She’ acts in the early table potato segment and she is conspicuous because of her strikingly-high yield which is between 55 and 60 tons per hectare. Marten Jukema, representative for France, Spain and Italy, explains that Actrice is a prospective replacement for the Agata variety. At any rate, the average hectare yield is already 5 tons higher than this highly-popular variety in Southern France, but even more important, according to Jukema is that ‘the Actrice is a rather tasty potato’. Well, we can at least conclude that the undesirable characteristic of the Agata has not been crossed into Actrice. Actrice is the result of Denise x Agata. Potato World 2009 • number 4 23 Pagina 22
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