News on Potato Varieties and Seed from Northern America

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed two new measures involving the potato industry last Wednesday. One law makes use of certified seed potatoes mandatory, the other enforces a faster response to the presence of late blight

Health Canada and Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) have completed the food, feed, and environmental safety assessments of the J.R. Simplot Company’s second generation of Innate® potatoes. The authorizations enable the potatoes to be imported, planted, and sold in Canada.

Two recently released new Russet varieties - Castle Russet and Echo Russet - should help the potato industry in the Pacific Northwest cope with more stringent regulations on soil fumigants

A couple of seed potato companies from Quebec, together with the Centre de Recherche Les Buissons (CRLB) have started an initiative to export high quality seed potatoes to Latin America and the Caribbean.

Simplot Plant Sciences will not commercially launch its Innate GMO potatoes in Canada this year, despite regulatory approval and interest among potato farmers to grow these new potatoes

With little fanfare, the Maine Board of Pesticides Control unanimously approved on Friday morning the registration of three new types of genetically engineered potatoes that have been developed by Simplot Plant Sciences.

The Northwest Potato Research Consortium recently approved a combined $1.5 million in grant funding to 37 research projects.

The potato disease Dickeya can be detected by laboratory testing — but is there enough of it present to justify the higher costs? That is the question facing Canadian Seed Potato Growers exporting to the United States who are increasingly asked for the test.

Years before that french fry landed on your plate, the plant that would eventually give rise to the spud your fry was cut from was sealed away deep in a secure-access building, growing slowly in a test tube inside a locked growth chamber.

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.

Following a highly successful launch in 2016, Canadian produce company EarthFresh is bringing its lower glycemic response (GR)* Carisma potato back to Ontario grocery retailers for an extended season.

Red-skinned potatoes are sure to be on the minds and menus of many after remarkable results shown by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s selections this year.

Since Monsanto took their genetically modified Newleaf /Naturemark potatoes of the market in 2001, no GM potatoes have been grown commercially in Canada. But Simplot's Innate potatoes are going to change that in 2017.

The US federal government has given the final OK to three more types of potatoes genetically engineered by Boise’s J.R. Simplot Co. to resist Phytophthora - the pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine.

University of Idaho has hired a new director for its nuclear seed potato program and plans to build additional facilities to help her expand production.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) annually releases 10-15 potato selections. To show these to the Canadian industry, AAFC will hold a Potato Release Open House on February 15, 2017, simultaneously in Fredericton, NB; Guelph, ON; and Lethbridge, AB.

It’s potato planting time in North Florida. St. Johns County is one of the counties in Northern Florida well known for its potato production with the town of Hastings being the center of it.

El rendimiento del cultivo de la papa en los países andinos es bajo y una causa es la degeneración de la semilla. Para solucionar el problema se crearon los sistemas formales de certificación de semillas. Pero su implementación no ha entregado los resultados esperados. Se requieren por tanto cambios en los actuales sistemas de semilla.