In the deep freeze that the Midwest has become this week, I’m thinking back to the warmth of last summer, and especially to all the farms I was able to visit. That’s definitely the most enjoyable part of my work, and I hope to visit many farms participating in our potato variety trials again in the coming summer.

Another enjoyable aspect of my work is evaluating our harvested variety trials – and late last month I finally had time to take the harvest out of storage and take a close look. What a diverse set of potatoes! There were some surprises, some disappointments, and some lines that show great promise as breeding parents. As I washed, weighed and rated potatoes, I thought about the great value of participatory research. My observations are a single snapshot of the potential of these potato varieties. To have observations from so many participating farms adds great depth and dependability to the data we’ve mutually gathered. To all the variety trial participants who have sent in your data and comment sheets for the varieties you trialed last year – thank you so much! I am getting into data analysis mode, and I’m looking forward to sharing the outcomes. I’ll have a poster at the MOSES Organic Farming Conference showing our observations from 2013. If you participated but haven’t yet sent in a datasheet, it is not too late! (In fact it is never too late – but the sooner the sheets come in, the more likely that the data can be included in the poster.)

I stayed busy in the late fall preparing for 2015 and 2016 – by maintaining our potato tissue culture collection. Since seed potato production starts with pathogen-free tissue culture plants, I multiplied tissue culture plants for about 50 varieties that need field evaluation. These plants were recently transplanted into our “nutrient film technique” (NFT) system – a shallow hydroponics set-up that allows us to pick minitubers at an ideal size. We expect to run three crops through the NFT system this year, producing minitubers that will be planted at our organic research farm site in 2015. Tubers harvested from these plots will become seed potatoes for on-farm variety trials in 2016.  

One clear finding from last year is that minitubers did not do well in most large field settings, where the crop is managed mechanically. In garden settings, minitubers performed quite well in comparison to regular seed potatoes. We do not plan on sending out any varieties as minitubers this year, unless specifically requested. Over the next month, I will post information and pictures for about 30 potato varieties that will be available for evaluation in our ongoing variety trialing project – these varieties were grown from minitubers on our organic research land last summer. Hopefully many of you will be able to try some of these varieties in 2014.

From now on I will be updating this blog on Mondays. So, till next week!

This article was posted in Blog Posts, Research News.