Potatoes are a staple of the Canadian diet, but they are a challenging crop to grow for producers. While the costs of production tend to go up, the price of the potato does not. Growers need to optimize their yield to make ends meet, and choosing the right spud to grow is crucial.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) held its potato selection release in Guelph this month. The annual release is generally held simultaneously in Fredericton, NB and Lethbridge, AB. This year it also happened in Guelph, a hub of agricultural research in Ontario. There are large potato growing operations in southern Ontario.
The release featured 32 new strains of potatoes, all culled from over 120,000 hybrid seedlings. Each strain was on display in a room in AAFC’s Guelph Food Research Centre on Stone Road, filling 32 small wicker baskets. Among them were varieties suitable for chips, others for French fries, and others as creamers.
The seedlings are grown and analysed in AAFC sponsored greenhouses, laboratories and fields across Canada. Some were grown and tested in University of Guelph’s Elora research station north of Guelph by researchers like Vanessa Currie, a research technician in the university’s plant agriculture department.
Currie said the varieties that are part of the selection release are offered to growers on what is called an accelerated release program.
“Every year on this day they have this accelerated release concurrently in Lethbridge and Fredericton, and now here in Guelph,” she said. “People from the industry, who grow and sell potatoes for a living, are here to have a look at them. They can evaluate the data, and they can sign up for nonexclusive evaluations for two years. Eventually they can bid on an exclusive proprietary agreement.”
The nonexclusive evaluation costs just $100, and includes a small amount of seed that can be grown by producers and studied for yield and resilience properties.
Shawn Brenn owns Brenn-B Farms in the Hamilton area, a mixed vegetable operation that specializes in potatoes. His farm grows about 750 acres in potatoes annually.
“We’re looking for the next best thing,” he said. “We are always looking for something new, unique, innovative – something that might provide us some opportunities with a niche market.”
Brenn said it is becoming increasingly difficult to be profitable in the potato business because of increasing production costs in combination with stalled prices for his product.
“You have to find varieties that have better characteristics that give you some sort of benefit moving forward,” he added. “Potatoes are always the same price, but we’ve got increased costs. The only way to fix that is to be more efficient at what we are doing, and one way is to find better varieties that have a financial benefit.”
The selections, said Elsayed Abdelaal, a senior research scientist with AAFC, are part of an ongoing effort to use advanced technologies to better understand the genetic makeup of potatoes, and identify those traits that might lead to higher yields, better nutritional value and processing characteristics. Disease and pest resistance are also among the traits sought.
“Researchers are using biotechnology to probe the DNA of potatoes,” he said. “This technology allows them to identify in the DNA of the potato a specific trait of interest.”
Each of the strains in the selection has its own special traits, he added, and if those match what the producer is after, evaluation agreements are entered into. In time, those strains could end up on the dinner tables of consumers. The process takes about three years from the selection release to the marketplace.
“This accelerated release program aims to fast-track the release of a potato with promising traits,” Abdelaal said. “Our ultimate goal is to have these varieties grown and commercialized.”
The event was held in Guelph this year as a way of better engaging large Ontario potato growers in the selection and evaluation process, he added.
