News on The Potato Supply Chain from Belgium

After more than 2 years, the first major international meeting platform for the potato chain will finally see the light of day: on Sunday 28, 29, and 30 November 2021, INTERPOM will be opening its doors in Kortrijk Xpo. At last, the potato professionals will be able to meet each other again!

North-western Europe will have had one of its most humid summers in the last decades! In some areas in Belgium and Western Germany, rainfall at mid-July was an absolute historic high.

As of the new storage potato season, the Belgapom price committee will only note the most frequently used price for the trade-in potatoes of the Fontane variety.

The new Spirit 7200 complements the AVR Spirit family with a drawn, two-row offset potato harvester. In essence, it is a further development of the Spirit 6200.

Scientists at the university of Ghent have developed a vaccine to combat potato blight, one of the most common diseases in potatoes.

Perfect seedbed preparation of the soil is crucial in potato cultivation. For this reason, AVR continues to develop not only its planting and harvesting machines, but also its cultivators.

The total potato area within the NEPG zone (EU-04) has been reduced by 4,7%. Potato area in EU-04 declines from 522.300 ha to 497.700 ha (-24.600 ha). There was a decrease in all countries, but most in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Declaración de Copa-Cogeca, Europatat, Euroseeds y Starch Europe sobre las nuevas técnicas genómicas en el mejoramiento de la patata.

On 10 June the European potato community virtually gathered for the Europatat Congress 2021. Under the slogan 'Stay
connected – new strategies for the potato sector'

It's easy to see a bruise on a person. Not so, on a potato. The bruises are under the product's skin and so not easily detected during processing. Science, however, has found a solution that gives the Belgian Colruyt Group a peek under potatoes' skins.

We can now confirm that INTERPOM will go ahead! From 28 to 30 November 2021, the global potato sector will be able to gather in Kortrijk Xpo, as it used to do in the past.

In April '21, AVR, manufacturer of a full range of machinery for the cultivation of potatoes, lent the services of its newest, cloud connected Ceres 440 planter to the Potato Europe fair organisation.

Dewulf and Agrointelli have announced that they will be working together to explore the benefits of using autonomous machines in potato cultivation. A first project will see the combination of the autonomous Robotti platform with a 4-row Miedema CP 42 cup planter.

According to Vandamme, mechanical cooling is an excellent basis for long-term storage of potatoes without loss of quality. In addition, cooling, in combination with 1,4SIGHT, is a suitable alternative to chlorpropham as a sprout inhibitor.

Good news for the potato sector: the European Commission has recently formally set the value of 0.4 ppm as the temporary maximum residual limit (LMRt) in potato (products).

Europatat, the European Potato Trade Association, is excited to announce that the 2021 edition of its annual Congress will be held on Thursday, 10th of June in a virtual format.

No one could miss it in the media last year: the COVID-19 pandemic hit the Belgian potato sector hard.

Dewulf, full-liner in machines for the cultivation of potatoes and root crops, has introduced several new options for their MH 24x series of receiving hoppers.