Maine may not lead the nation in potato production, but as the state’s largest cash crop, a partnership between the University of Maine and the Maine Potato Board (MPB) is determined to make sure Maine potato growers of every scale have access to some of the highest quality seeds in order to sustain a bountiful harvest.
Over the last year and a half, through funding from the MPB and research development from UMaine, three new varieties of potatoes have been developed and released into the market.
“The University has the research and development capability and commitment for developing new potato varieties, from the lab to the field, which takes years,” Don Flannery, MPB executive director, said in a press release. “They understand what the growers and the industry are looking for and need. We in turn, the MPB, have the capacity to promote the varieties and maintain the quality of seed required for the integrity of the variety and the market.”
The three varieties, Caribou Russet, Sebec and Easton were each developed over a period of 10 to 12 years through a series of cross-pollinations in greenhouse and laboratory research at UMaine and then field tested at UMaine’s Aroostook Research Farm in Presque Isle.
The process of developing a new variety of potato starts with research and ends with commercialization, to do so Porter said that a number of constituencies must be involved in the process. Through the Maine Potato Board, researchers have access to growers and market producers who can identify a problem they have been having with existing varieties of potatoes.
“There are many challenges in growing potatoes so there are many problems that we need to be helping to solve. As a Land Grant University, part of what we do is serve the state and serve components of the economy that are important to the people of Maine,” chief researcher of UMaine’s breeding program, Dr. Greg Porter, said. “Plus to actually go from research to commercialization you need to have people that are in business, people that are involved in the industry to support your research products, and make investments in them.”
From that point, science takes over, and researchers in the School of Food and Agriculture can begin to use cross-pollination methods to combine the best characteristics of existing potato varieties in order to hopefully provide a solution to the problems growers in the field are facing.
Porter, who grew up on a Maine potato farm, believes that this is one of the areas where as a public Land Grant university, UMaine can fulfill its mission to the people of Maine who rely on the potato industry for their livelihoods.
“Potatoes are naturally something I’ve been very interested in since I was small. I have a long history, my family still is in the potato industry so I still have a connection to the potato farming community,” Porter said. “But I have a training in science, I’m interested in the challenge of solving problems, so when the potato industry started having problems with a new virus that was hurting their potato crop, they were looking for solutions. It’s really exciting to me as a scientist to be able to look into the science, what is available to solve the problem and to immediately start adapting our research program, so that we will be producing new varieties.”
According to Porter, there are a number of characteristics that determine a variety of potato’s quality. From color, to internal texture, to disease resistance, to yields, each potato variety has unique characteristics that make it desirable.
“People think of potatoes as maybe the potato they bake, or the potato they have in the restaurants wrapped in foil, but there are all kinds of different colors and flavors and things that you can produce,” Porter said.
What the researchers job is then to do, is to cross-pollinate two varieties of potatoes that have different desirable qualities in order to create a new variety that solves a spectrum of problems growers and producers have been encountering with existing varieties.
The Caribou Russet, released last month, is a cross between a Silverton Russet and a Reeves Kingpin. The resulting cross is a high yielding variety with potential for large-scale French-fry production markets, with a consistent white-flesh interior that lacks the appearances of “hollow heart” that some French-fry varieties have. Porter said that this variety also has potential for small-scale markets looking to provide consumers a high quality baking or mashing potato.
A year and a half ago, UMaine released it’s first two varieties, the Sebec and the Easton, both of which are destined for large-scale markets. With high yields and low risk for internal defects, the Sebec was introduced to compete with the existing Atlantic variety for potato chip production in areas along the East Coast.
“We see this as being a variety that can compete with Atlantic for yield and quality but it has very low incidences of those internal defects. So we see it as being really potentially valuable for our seed growers,” Porter said.
As far as naming the new varieties goes, Porter has stuck with the tradition of naming potatoes varieties after geographic places. The Caribou Russet is named after the northern town of Caribou, Maine that sustains a large potato farming community. The Easton was named after the town of Easton, Maine where the state’s largest French-fry processing plant is located. For the Sebec variety, Porter paid homage to the “beautiful” Sebec Lake.
These three varieties are now in the commercialization phase of the variety release, and the MPB is working to get growers in possession of these new seeds in order to establish the varieties into the market.
“We are already fielding questions from growers around the country as well as in Maine. This partnership is truly advantageous for the industry,” Flannery said.
The partnership is currently working on releasing several new varieties that are aimed at small-scale consumer markets. One variety in particular is a cross between a red-skinned and a yellow-skinned potato, which Porter believes will be valuable for fresh markets, or roadside produce stands.
“We’re trying to service both large scale market,that would make potatoes that would go into the baking potato type sector, to the larger scale markets that produce potato chips, or produce French fries, but we’re also looking for unique things — specialty varieties that can be grown and consumed by gardeners and organic roadside stand operations that sell directly to consumers,” Porter said.
Source: Lauren Abbate (http://mainecampus.com)
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