Combining Simplot’s extensive experience in agriculture with the latest in biotechnology, the Simplot Plant Sciences team developed Innate™ technology, an innovative biotechnology platform for improving potatoes.
This new biotechnology process results in tangible improvements in potatoes and other crops, leading to better foods and ultimately, increased sustainability. These efforts all focus on improvements within the potato’s own species. They simply work on continuous improvements by enhancing or suppressing specific traits within a potato to provide better yield, storage, taste and nutrition.
Simplot’s new Innate™ plant biotechnology process will improve the marketability and health aspects of potatoes, resulting in benefits to consumers, potato processors, growers, and the environment. These potatoes are not plant pests, pose no harm to other species, and grow just like conventional potatoes.
Characteristics of Innate™ Potatoes
- No new allergens - Innate™ potatoes contain DNA from wild and cultivated potatoes.
- Low risk of cross pollination - Commercial potatoes are grown from tubers, not seed. In addition, many commercial potatoes are either sterile or not sexually compatible with wild potatoes. Wild potatoes are rare and flowers are not frequented by honeybees due to a lack of nectar.
- Low weediness potential - Innate™ potatoes are grown just like other cultivated potatoes. Since they are a rotational crop susceptible to temperature fluctuations, potatoes typically do not survive outside cultivated fields.
- No adverse impact to human health, other species or the environment - Innate™ potatoes contain potato DNA and are grown just like regular, cultivated potatoes with no need for special pesticides or fertilizers.
- Same taste and growing characteristics - Innate™ potatoes have the same taste and growth characteristics as their commercially grown counterparts since only the natural traits for lower asparagine, lower black spot bruise and lower reducing sugars were optimized.
Several of the potato varieties of the first generation Innate potatoes have received proprietary variety names:
- 'Cultivate' - Innate Russet Burbank (first generation)
- 'Generate' - Innate Ranger Russet (first generation)
- 'Accelerate' - Innate Atlantic (first generation)
- 'Invigorate' - Innate Snowden (first generation)
Second Generation Innate® Potatoes
Second generation Innate® potatoes beneficial traits of relevance to potato growers, processors and consumers:
- Protection against the late blight pathogen
- Reduced bruising and black spot
- Reduced asparagine, which contributes to reduced acrylamide in cooked potatoes
- Lower reducing sugars, which further contributes to reduced acrylamide while enhancing cold storage capability
