News on New Potato Varieties from Texas

New potato varieties bred by the Texas A&M Potato Breeding Program could enter the french fry market before long, said Isabel Vales, Ph.D., Texas A&M AgriLife potato breeder in the Department of Horticultural Sciences

Earlier this month Texas A&M held its annual Potato Field Day where it presented a range of new potato varieties.

Dirk Hays,Texas A&M AgriLife Research plant geneticist: “With Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), we can image the size of the tubers and get a correlation to the actual physical size of the potato without harvesting them. Potatoes are a dream for Ground Penetrating Radar.”

The Texas A&M AgriLife Research plant pathology team intentionally infected potato plants with psyllids positive with the bacterium that causes zebra chip disease, in order to identify promising germplasm in the battle against the disease plaguing the US potato industry for the past 15 years.

Participants at the 25th annual Texas Potato Breeding and Variety Development Program field day learned that the harvest is underway, that psyllids are threatening unharvested fields and that new varieties are showing lots of promise.

The annual Potato Field Day in the High Plains featuring the Texas A&M University AgriLife Potato Breeding and Variety Development Program will be July 21.

Texas-based MountainKing Potatoes is offering retailers the opportunity to cash in on the recent harvest of its popular Gold potatoes with a comprehensive promotion designed to drive sales of the fastest-growing variety among all bagged potatoes.

This year's major news of the Texas A&M Potato Breeding Program is a new early potato variety called Reveille Russet, a russet baking potato headed to the fresh market.

A decline in overall potato consumption has Texas A&M AgriLife Research breeders working on “designer” potatoes that meet the time constraints and unique tastes of a younger generation.