RE SEARCH New breeding method leads surprisingly fast to new varieties duction of horticultural seeds. You can then say: I want to plant half the country with a newly-selected new variety. Once this is done, you can supply plenty of planting stock the following year. The question is only how many million seeds do you need for this season, for it’s possible to produce them within one generation. This isn’t a utopian dream, definitely not. It’s being done regularly in horticulture. A breeding method like this makes the entire sector extremely flexible. If you are a consumption potato grower and you say: for next year, I want that new Phytophthora-resistant hybrid variety with 5 percent more yield, it can be done. The situation now is that, after the introduction of a new variety, you have to wait at least five years before there are sufficient seed potatoes ready. The gain ‘Suppose you want to cross Phytophthora resistance from a wild variety into a Bintje. Wild varieties are not exactly famous for their tuber characteristics. What you need to do is to cross back, but you can’t do that with the Bintje itself, because that would result in an inbreeding depression. The following step would be to cross with a Désirée, for example, to improve the yield again. But for every crossing you do, you have to test for five generations again in the field before you can make a further crossing. Before you’ve found something that’s useful, fif‘We now have inbreeding lines, but they’re not good enough. We still have to try our utmost to get the best out of them.’ teen years have gone by. Suppose you want to breed in more Phytophthora-resistance genes. Two, three or four resistances are better than one, aren’t they? It will take at least 25 to 35 years before you come to a strong, resistant variety. This process is much faster in hybrid breeding. You can already get the required resistance in five years. The introduction of new varieties is also much faster and more flexible with seed. A problem is still the cultivation. You can already plant in April if you use seed potatoes. You can’t do that with seed. You can’t sow seed very early because of the risk of frost which might kill the small, vulnerable seedlings. You have to wait until late spring before you can sow or put seedlings into the ground. This is basically too late, because there isn’t enough growing time for a proper harvest. That’s our experience so far, but we still have to do many more tests. Perhaps we have to sow a bit closer than we’ve done so far. Or we should grow minitubers first before starting with the consumption potatoes. That’s what we still have to find out. We could also grow the minitubers all year round, because seed is always available. We could also ‘You can already plant in April if you use seed potatoes. You can’t do that with seed. You can’t sow seed very early because of the risk of frost which might kill the small, vulnerable seedlings. Or we should grow minitubers first before starting with the consumption potatoes’, is the experience at Solynta. automat a lot more, like in greenhouse farming. It would mean that the price of minitubers could also go down, perhaps from 50 eurocents to 5 eurocents a minituber. That would also mean cheap seed and the grower doesn’t even have to sow.’ Acceptance ‘I’m enthusiastic, you see, because the method has taken off much faster than we ever thought. In 2010 and 2011, we had 10,000 plants in the field and selected fifty, that’s less than 1 percent. We now have inbreeding lines, but they’re not good enough. We still have to try our utmost to get the best out of them. In addition, we still have to tackle the many logistics challenges. How do you sell that hybrid seed, how efficient should you be, and where are you going to go? How do you organise seed legalisation. About that last point. I went to see the nVWA (Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority) recently. They told me there that we’re not allowed to import seed from potatoes into the Netherlands. The idea of producing seed abroad for the Dutch market would not be possible if regulations don’t change. But if they should change, we would still be left with a problem. The nVWA doesn’t have sufficient Potato World 2012 • number 3 15 Pagina 14
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