French edition with European style CULTIVATION AND TECHNOLOGY Is Obama going to win? The Agata is mentioned again when we visit the Potato Masters and HZPC stands, because they present the Obama variety. The Dutch selection company Kooij from Leeuwarden has also added this variety to their range. According to director André Postma, this variety with the presidential name may well be a tough competitor for the Agata. It is an early variety, has a better taste and grows fast. Patrick Carrez, HZPC trial field manager in France, can endorse this description. The Obama is currently being trialled in the Picardy, Beauce and Champagne regions. Carrez already speaks of the new Agata even though there are only 1.5 hectares of seed in Europe. ‘We’re following the variety over a period of five years and we’ve already completed several years. The results are promising, especially in clay and sandy soils. Grown on clay, the Obama has a more attractive skin than the Agata. Only in loam soil the variety develops a bit too slowly which means the harvest can be a bit late. For the table potato growers, it seems to be a super variety with a good size and a high yield. The variety easily yields 60 tons per hectare in the trial fields’, according to Carrez. The question now is whether the variety will gain more acreage. De Jazzy experience ‘We don’t intend to open an attack on varieties. We’re just looking for good varieties and trying to market them as best we can’, is sales manager Johan van der Stee’s response to the constant attention for Agata successors at PotatoEurope. What Meijer focuses on is the marketing of varieties on the basis of concept marketing. An example is the Jazzy experience. This is about the marketing for the Jazzy variety, a table potato that yields many relatively small, beautiful, smooth, yellow-skinned tubers. With this variety, in addition to the Dutch market, Meijer aims to conquer the French market for both consumption and multiplication. Jazzy has been cultivated in the trial fields of both countries. According to Van der Stee, this variety yields high and stores well. The external characteristics of the Jazzy are that they are clearly suitable for packaging in 1 to 2.5 kilogram net bags. It is immediately clear to the consumer what is actually in the bag. What will surprise many of them are the short cooking time and the especially-good taste, according to Van der Stee. ‘They are al dente in 8 minutes.’ To promote these characteristics of the Jazzy as much as possible, every PotatoEurope visitor was presented with a free net bag. As was to be expected, they were in great demand. Heat-exchange units bring relief for high night temperatures Mooij Agro was one of the Dutch companies at PotatoEurope with a stand in the Holland Pavilion. A remarkable novelty was a compact heat exchanger that is suitable for storehouses in hot countries, as Hans van den Oever shows us. In countries where the night temperature in the storehouse is never lower than 15 degrees Celsius, it is hardly possible to freshen the air in the storage cells, as a result of which the CO2 concentration is often too high. In these cases, a heat exchanger unit can bring relief This piece of equipment can quickly reduce the outside air temperature to storage temperature, so that fresh air can be let in also when temperatures are high. The heat exchanger can be built up from various elements, each with a capacity of about 100 tons of product. So a storehouse with 1,000 tons of potatoes will need ten elements. Such a unit of ten elements costs 4,000 euros, exclusive of vat. Potato World 2012 • number 4 27 Pagina 26
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