New Potato Varieties Released by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
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LETHBRIDGE – Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has released 16 new potato varieties this year.
The selections were narrowed down from more than 120,000 hybrid seedlings that have been grown and tested in greenhouses across Canada over the past six years.
Technology is playing a key role in allowing researchers to probe the complicated DNA of potatoes to identify genes and strands of DNA linked to traits of interest, which leads to better yields, nutrition, cooking and processing qualities, and disease and pest resistance.
“Growers are pressured to grow more on less, they want to grow more potatoes with less acreage , they want to grow potatoes with less nitrogen, less phosphorus, less water inputs, so there’s a real squeeze. They need to make bottom line, the processors still need the acreage , they still need the yield in order to satisfy customers, but the growers are always, sort of, under the gun to do better with what they’ve got,” explains Michele Konschuh, Research Scientist with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry.
