A look at newest potato varieties available for Canadian potato growers for the 2023 growing season.
With winter in full swing across Canada, it’s time to plan for spring. Spud Smart checked in with potato breeders and seed companies across the country to see what the latest varieties available for the upcoming growing season are.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
AAC Red Fox
AAC Red Fox has smooth dark red skin with light yellow flesh. It’s a fresh market variety with high yields and uniform, medium sized oval tubers. AAC Red Fox is resistant to potato virus X, moderately resistant to common scab, and susceptible to potato virus Y (PVY). It has good boil and bake scores with a short dormancy period. It’s licensed to the Prince Edward Island Potato Board with seed multiplication currently happening.
Edmonton Potato Growers
Camelia
Camelia is a maincrop yellow fleshed variety, bred by HZPC. It’s a sustainable variety that has a broad resistance package and grows well under stressful conditions. It has uniform tuber size and shape, is high yielding, and can be used for multiple purposes. Camelia has good resistance to common scab and is suitable for long term storage.
Rosi
Rosi is a luxurious red skin variety with white creamy flesh inside that is bred by HZPC. It has a later maturity variety and is high yielding with medium sized tubers. This makes it suitable for both retail and more traditional markets. Rosi has uniform tuber size and shape, good cooking qualities, good resistance to common scab, and good storability scores.
Kroeker Farms Limited
AAC Red Viola
AAC Red Viola is meant for the baby potato market for boiling and baking. It has deep red skin and bright white flesh and produces tubers that resemble radishes. This high-yielding variety produces tubers of uniform size. It’s medium maturing, with high scab resistance and it keeps its red skin colour even after cooking.
La Patate Lac-Saint-Jean
Blanche
Blanche has yellow skin and flesh. It can be used as a fresh or processing variety with good boiling, baking and french fry scores. Blanche has mid-season maturity and long dormancy with a high tuber number. It’s a very smoothed skin variety with good common scab, PVY resistance and potato cyst nematode (PCN) resistance. Blanche also has good a storability score.
Maggie
Maggie is a yellow skin and flesh fresh potato variety with excellent taste and superior yield. It is good boiling and cooking in oven. Maggie has early maturity and short-term dormancy. The tuber number is medium high. Maggie has sensitivity to seed piece decay if it isn’t handled properly at cutting or planted in poor conditions.
Red Prairie
Red Prairie has red skin with white flesh and is oblong in shape. It’s a fresh potato variety that is good for boiling. Red Prairie has mid-season maturity and a long dormancy. When compared to Norland, the tuber set is a little higher and the maturity a little later. It has good hollow hearth resistance, and medium resistance to common scab.
Volare
Volare is a fresh potato variety with white skin and flesh. It has early maturity and short dormancy. Volare is an early maturity, high yielding variety, with large, uniform tubers. Volare has PCN resistance, and light susceptibility to common scab.
New Brunswick Department of Agriculture, Aquaculture and Fisheries
CO05189-3Rus (Horizon Russet, pending approval)
Horizon Russet is a promising early fresh market variety with a uniform tuber size. Its tubers are blocky and have a netted appearance. Horizon Russet grows well on dry land conditions. It has a 10.8 per cent higher marketable yield than Gold Rush. It’s resistant to hollow heart, growth crack and common scab, and has good resistance to PVY.
Potato Variety Management Institute
Mountain Gem Russet
Mountain Gem Russet is a dual-purpose medium to late maturing variety. It’s oblong-long in shape and has medium-russeted tubers with higher protein content than standard potato varieties. Mountain Gem Russet has high early and full season yields. It’s favoured by Cavendish Farms.
Pomerelle Russet
Pomerelle Russet is a dual-purpose russet, with medium heavy russet and smooth oblong-long uniform tubers. It’s early maturing and produces moderately high early-season yields. It has greater resistance to soft rot, corky ringspot and tuber infections from late blight. Laurentian Potatoes is the Canada seller of Pomerelle Russet.
Targhee Russet
Targhee Russet is a dual-purpose variety with vine maturity similar to Russet Burbank. It produces a high yield of attractive, long tubers with medium-russeted skin. Targhee has resistance to soft rot and excellent resistance to most internal and external defects except for shatter bruise. It is favoured by Cavendish Farms.
Teton Russet
Teton Russet has good skin and shallow eyes and is used for processing and fresh. It’s a cross between Blazer Russet and Classic Russet with oblong tubers. Teton Russet yields at 100 to 110 days after planting with yields similar to or slightly higher than standard Russet Norkotah. It’s resistant to dry rot but is susceptible to soft rot and shatter bruise. Teton Russet was recently accepted by McDonald as its golden fry standard.
Progest 2001
AG1534
AG1534 is a red skinned potato cultivar developed by Progest2001. It has a deep red skin with a nice round shape. AG1534 has shown similar to or higher yields than Chieftain. It’s a fresh variety with great culinary qualities. AG1534 is currently in the multiplication process for seed commercialization and should be available in the next few years.
Solanum International
Alaska Gold
Alaska Gold is a fresh market variety with yellow skin and flesh that’s very high yielding. It produces very high yields of round to round oval tubers with bright smooth skin and shallow eyes. Alaska Gold has good heat and drought tolerance with good resistance to common scab. It’s an all-purpose cooking type potato. Alaska Gold has even tuber size distribution and is a good storage potato.
Noya
Noya is a white fleshed, medium early maturing, table potato variety with smooth, light-yellow skin. It yields high and has uniform size distribution of the tubers — even throughout the growing season. Noya is meant for the white fleshed table market and is a general-purpose cooking variety for boiling and baking. It has excellent storage capabilities. Noya is slightly susceptible to common scab.
Header photo — Alaska Gold is a fresh market variety with yellow skin and flesh that’s very high yielding from Solanum International. Photo: Solanum International
