TRADE AND MARKETING Secret of the cultivation of Scottish seed potatoes revealed CAITHNESS IN SEARCH OF NEW VARIETIES The big difference with the cyst flushing machine used by the NAK in Emmeloord, is that the soil is flushed under high pressure, Kerr explains. oped into a record sale of 101,030 tons on a total area of 11,374 hectares. With more than 50 percent of that quantity, Egypt is by far the biggest sales market, followed at a considerable distance by Israel, Morocco and the Canary Islands. What the consequences of the unrest in the Arabic world will mean for Scotland will become clear in the coming weeks. Fifty eurocents per minituber At the moment, SASA has a total of seven hundred in-vitro varieties in stock. Every two years, the plants are cut and tested again for type-trueness. All Scottish seed potato growers start a seed potato cultivation standard with minitubers. The every-day development of minitubers takes place at six companies, which use all well-known systems such as hydroponics, aeroponics and peat. TLC, located near Banchory in the Northwest corner of Scotland, is one of the companies that supply the minitubers to the Scottish seed potato growers. After negative experiences with hydroponics, this company now deliberately cultivates the plants in peat. ‘In peat, we can supply our customers with many more tubers with a minimum size of 20 mm. To supply smaller minitubers causes many more problems in the second growth’, is TLC director Colin Blackhall’s experience. In addition, the minitubers from peat are much sturdier and have much more growing power. The company produces 1 million minitubers of at least 20 mm annually. ‘We grow the minitubers at the same tempo as the potatoes in the field. We don’t use extra light or heat in our greenhouses.’ The 20 mm and bigger minitubers are sold at 40 pence (50 eurocents) per tuber. The 18-20 mm sizes are sold at 20 pence and the 15-18 sizes only fetch 15 pence per tuber. Blackhall sees it as a challenge for the future to harvest more tubers per plant in order to cut the costs even further. Not easy to introduce new varieties Approximately 14 percent of the TCL minitubers go to the British branch of the Dutch cooperative Agrico, which we also visit together with the group of breeders. Agrico UK Ltd., Caithness annually exports approximately 30,000 tons of seed potatoes. This comprises a turnover value of over 6 million British pounds. The seed potato merchant has also allocated an extensive range of varieties under licence. This brings the total turnover to 60,000 tons of seed potatoes. The largest licence variety is the Nadine. In New Zealand, the variety has even more than 50 percent of the table potato market. In addition, Caithness is also active in North America, Australia and France. Since June 2010, the company has also had an office in the Netherlands under the name of Caithness Potatoes BV. Co-owner of this company is the Dutchman Jan Eric Geersing, together with four other Caithness shareholders. Geersing, a crop protection specialist at Cebeco, has a lot of experience in breeding. It is a specialism he learnt many years ago from Jaap van der Veen, a breeder at Den Hartigh. The object of the new BV (a BV is a private limited company under Dutch law) is to start breeding new varieties with a group of Dutch hobby breeders. Since the focus at Caithness is mainly on white-fleshed potatoes, in his breeding work, Geersing focuses more on his own breeding programme with yellow-fleshed varieties for the European mainland. With this he hopes to look from the perspective of the customer, with the focus on the French fries varieties. He also wants to trial the large white-fleshed varieties, which are usually quickly thrown out by the Dutch breeders. This type of potato is still very popular throughout the world. As Caithness operates worldwide, there must be a market for these types of potatoes. The Dutch breeders in the visiting party are carefully inspecting the varieties that they have given to the Scottish company, and the other breeding results of the Caithness group, including those of Zella Doig, Robert’s mother. Robert Doig, Gordon Smillie and Dominic and Ian Guindi explain that they are looking for varieties with higher resistance characteristics. They are also aiming to lower the cost per hectare. From the rows of trays, what particularly catches the eye, apart from a few numbers, are the Divaa, Marvel, Marcelle and the Bute. These varieties will be tested further in various trial fields at home and abroad in the coming period. Gordon Smillie, Robert Doig and Jan Eric Geersing (left to right) are trying to reduce the cost per hectare together with various other breeders. Potato World 2012 • number 2 43 Pagina 42
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