CU LTIVATION AND TECHNOLOGY Mostly dry weather, lots of interest and plenty of novelties Even more accuracy is required when fogging new sprout inhibitors EGG wants micro tubers at the basis of European potato propagation ‘What matters is the exact adjustment of the liquid temperature for spraying, which requires even more accuracy than before’, says director Jos Veugen. Frans Veugen Bedrijfshygiëne, a company based in Nederweert, has been making atomisers for sprout inhibitors for many years. Now that Chlorine-IPC is going to disappear from the market, other devices are needed to optimally atomise the replacement products. For new products such as 1.4SIGHT and Biox-M, Veugen has the Synofog available. ‘What matters is the exact adjustment of the liquid temperature for spraying, which requires even more accuracy than before’, says director Jos Veugen. ‘When adjusting, a variety of factors can have a negative influence, for example, fluctuations in the outside temperature. This requires special adjustments to the new atomisers. The temperature setting for each product is also different. It takes time to gain experience with this. Two versions of the Synofog are now ready for use with the alternatives for Chlorine-IPC’, says Veugen at PotatoEurope. These are types 1H and 2H with a capacity of 15 and 30 litres of liquid atomisation per hour, respectively. The 1 H version costs 15,000 euros and the 2H 17,500 euros, both excluding VAT. The purchase prices are therefore considerably higher than those of the equipment with which you could spray Chlorine IPC. E Green Global (EGG) has already introduced itself to the potato world in the past and was now also present with a stand at PotatoEurope. It is an internationally-operating company from South Korea that produces micro potato tubers as planting stock. It also has branches in the United States and China and has plans to settle in Europe with a propagation laboratory in 2020 or 2021 at the latest, most likely in the Netherlands. Director Epi Postma of E Green Europe (EGE) Business Development Europe doesn’t want to say anything about the exact location yet. However, he can already reveal that he’s busy making an inventory of the demand among European seed potato merchants (of which suspiciously many are operating in the Netherlands),as well as among processing industries and seed and ware potato growers in order to get started with micro tubers. Postma quickly gives an explanation of what’s what. ‘EGG has developed a laboratory method to produce potato tubers that are the size of small marbles, only 1 gram a tuber, which are therefore a lot smaller than mini tubers and just as vital and free from diseases such as viruses and bacteria. It’s possible to produce large numbers of tubers year-round in the very short period of 3 months, about 150 times as much as in the conventional propagation of seed. Moreover, the propagation process is shorter than the traditional method. The second generation, G2, is already the harvest that goes to the factory. Propagation can also be carried out all year round at any time. A breeder and/or buyer can have a lot of starting material available in a short period of time. Because the micro tubers are a lot smaller than normal seed and also considerably smaller than mini tubers, very little volume is needed for transport compared to the usual planting stock’, Postma lists one of the many advantages. So it involves much lower transport costs and is even quite close to what potato seed propagators ‘EGG has developed a laboratory method to produce potato tubers that are the size of small marbles, only 1 gram a tuber, which are therefore a lot smaller than mini tubers’, explains Epi Postma to one of the visitors. call a plus point. ‘The advantage compared to the normal breeders is that EGG works with normal tetraploid propagation material, of already existing varieties. In practice, the company grows micro tubers from cultivated plants under sterile in-vitro conditions in a period of three months. After harvesting, they spend about a week in the climate room to sprout and then go with sprouts and all to the growers who plant them in beds or ridges using slightly adapted maize sowing machines or mini tuber planting machines. This can be done when the weather and soil conditions are optimal for the job. This is often the case in important growing regions in Korea, China and the United States. It is dry there and growers subsequently supply water via irrigation. In Europe, however, the weather isn’t always optimal for planting so growers would prefer to receive non-sprouted seed and they can pre-sprout them themselves just before the planting conditions are right. A practical solution is still needed to solve this. For example, we might leave the presprouting to the growers, but they will need a climate chamber to do that, says Postma. 28 Potato World 2019 • number 4 Pagina 27
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