Texas A&M potato breeding trials offer Reds, Russets, Babies and Bakers

When Kelly Kuball walked the Texas A&M Potato Breeding and Variety Development Program variety display trials near Springlake recently, he was a long way from his specialty potato company in Arvin, California.

Kuball said the Texas A&M potato breeding materials have the potential to provide new products for his Tasteful Selections clientele. As the company’s variety development coordinator, he is looking for potatoes with unique characteristics, such as shape, color, size – “anything that might improve what we already grow and put in our bag for our customers.”

Tasteful Selections concentrates mainly on baby potatoes, a rapidly growing market, he said. This is his fourth year to come observe the trials in Springlake, but he has been growing and evaluating Texas A&M potatoes for seven years in California and at other Tasteful Selections growing regions on the West Coast.

They currently have three Texas experimental varieties in their advanced trials.

Fresh Market Russets

Isabel Vales, Texas A&M AgriLife Research potato breeder:

“We work in different market classes.”

“Clearly the fresh market russets are very important, followed by the chippers.”

Selections then are moved to the national level and placed in the Southwestern trials, which includes Texas, Colorado and California, she said. If they pass that level, they go to the Western Region trials, which include those three states as well as Washington, Idaho and Oregon.

Chipping Potatoes

The chipping potatoes have a separate national effort with several other states and trials, Vales said.

While Texas A&M has a big breeding effort in chipping, she said they are not ready to release anything yet.