The potato is one of the most important crops in the world as well as being, for its accessible price, one of the most consumed foods worldwide and in all cultures. The potato has great benefits, it is a food that already in history was consumed to fight famine and poverty and feed an entire population. We already spoke in the previous publication of the Peruvian potato Kulli that has been created with the objective of fighting against the malnutrition and the anemia of the population. If you want to know more about this potato click on the following link: https://potatomarket.com/kulli-potato-new-varieties/?lang=en

With the same objective as Peru, Solynta has produced a hybrid cultivation program that can help feed millions of people. The Dutch company has succeeded in making hybrid breeding applicable to the world’s third largest basic crop: potato.  According to the company, “for the first time in history, we can now quickly combine favourable traits of different potato varieties to make better tasting, disease resistant and higher yielding, improved varieties. This has been done for years with foods like – for example – tomato, peppers and cucumbers, but no-one has ever achieved it effectively for potatoes before. Delivering tremendous added value to consumers, farmers and processors.”

On top of that these Solynta varieties can be grown from so called ‘true seeds’ rather than the ‘seed-tubers’ which are usually used to grow potatoes. Just 25 grams of pristine true-seeds can replace 2500 kilos of bulky and perishable seed-tubers. This magnitude of difference will drastically reduce the cost and difficulty of transport.  At the same time, the company considers that its technology is going to be a great advance because they have managed to create more nutritious foods, with less use of water, less environmental impact, less use of pesticides, on less land and with a better adaptability to climate change.

Will this be the future for all potato growers?