RE SEARCH Organically and conventionally-grown potatoes brought together in BioImpuls For many years now, you have been working actively in organic research, in particular in the domain of Phytophthora. What has been achieved so far? ‘In 1990, I was already involved in potato research at the Louis Bolk institute. We started to write a manual for the cultivation of organic seed, which was soon followed by our involvement in the European study into organic measures against Phytophthora. The problems this disease causes are many times higher for the Dutch organic potato grower than those in other parts of Europe. The reason for this is that in other countries copper is still not prohibited as a pesticide in the cultivation of organic potatoes. Meanwhile, at the Louis Bolk Institute, we have looked really hard for cultivation measures to curb the problem. To do this, we studied measures such as natural substances, wider planting distances and the influence of the direction of the wind on the position of the ridges. We also studied mixtures of varieties but, at that time, we didn’t yet have varieties that were resistant to the disease. We haven’t made a great deal of progress with these studies. The difference in extra yield was not more than 5 percent, but that was never enough to make an economic difference compared to the effort it took. Were you looking into the wrong direction? ‘Yes and no. We first ticked off all the possible cultivation measures. Resistance breeding was the only option left. That’s an enormous task so we hesitated before deciding to take it on. However, when I started the Special Chair for Organic Plant Breeding at Wageningen University in 2005, right from the beginning I received requests from the entire sector to find a solution quickly for the Phytophthora problems, and that gave me the chance to start up a programme for resistance breeding.’ Who sent those request? ‘Niek Vos, an organic potato grower and one of the few potato growers at that moment in the Netherlands who was quick to ask me for support. He said that he wanted to step up his efforts on breeding in order to turn the tide within the sector, but that he couldn’t possibly do this on his own. ”If we decide to do it we must do it properly right from the start”, I said, and “we need the help of more farmer breeders to be successful, just like with conventional potato cultivation”. As it happened, more or less at the same time, researcher and breeder Ronald Hutten from Wageningen came to see me with a proposal and that brought the two things nicely together. He suggested that we set up a potato breeding programme that fully complied with the conditions for the cultivation of organic potatoes. At that point, I was able to link the two requests, the practical and the research, and that’s how we decided in 2006 to explore the best way of getting this project going.’ Were you able to find the appropriate funds quickly? ‘How to finance this was indeed the next question. I realised that it was going to be difficult to get money to support only one breeder and a bit of supplementary research; we needed to organise a firmer basis. Immediately my thoughts went towards copying the unique Dutch system as conventional potato breeding is doing with hobby breeders. Using a participation approach like this means the sector carryies out a good part of the hard work themselves. This is not too difficult in potato breeding, because we work with clones which have characteristics that don’t split up further in following generations. Farmers are well able to make decisions about potato plants based on the idea “would I want to have this in my store or not?”. At the same time, I’d got the idea of using the expertise from the conventional sector in the organic sector, and also to act as a bridge between the two sectors. The Netherlands is, in fact, very important in the world of potato breeding and it would be strange not to use that. And conversely, the results of organic breeding can also be used for conventional farming. Cooperation between the two sectors helps avoid doing double the work, while research money can be used more efficiently. As Ronald Hutten has a special position within Wageningen University as an independently-practising breeder, he was able to bridge the gap between the conventional and organic sectors right from the start. Did you receive sufficient support from the sector? ‘To top it all, we had the Phytophthora disaster in 2007. That gave an extra impulse to continue the development of breeding in the organic sector. And that was the beginning of the BioImpuls umbrella programme. What I forgot to mention is that, in 2004, a European guideline came into effect that forced farmers to use organic stock for the cultivation of their potatoes. That was also an extra stimulus, also from the point of view of the breeding stations, to start developing new varieties for the organic sector. And the Netherlands already had 100 percent organic seed available before 2004, as the potato was the first crop to do this. This meant that there was sufficient support for the research after 2007 among the conventional breeding stations, as well as among the growers of organic strains.’ What were your priorities? ‘We were thinking of four segments in the BioImpuls programme. Breeding had priority no. 1. In addition, we also needed to improve the cultivation methods with the support of Applied Research, Plant & Environment (PPO). And then, of course, there is the market. The market also needs to move. What we see is that, where organic sales as a whole increase, the potato isn’t part of it. In addition, we need a better exchange of knowledge on the research into cultivation. We’ve been lobbying hard at the Ministry of Agriculture for financing. Initially to no avail! We had to break up the project into pieces. With the help of organic farmer Harm Evert Waalkens, who was a Member of Parliament at the time, there was an amendment to the agriculture budget at the end of 2008 which meant that the BioImpuls project could finally take off a year later. Incidentally, we also obtained a small budget from Potato World 2013 • number 2 5 Pagina 4
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