Cultivated potato (Solanum tuberosum) is a tough nut to crack in terms of plant breeding. It is a tetraploid crop, which means it has four sets of chromosomes and it is largely a heterozygous crop, which makes potato research and breeding through traditional crossbreeding a huge challenge. But help is on the way: by specific applications of genome editing, one or a few traits can be added to a commercial potato variety,…
McCain Foods (Canada) announced it will invest $80 million towards the creation of a new Formed Potato Specialty production line at its existing Grand Falls, N.B., facility. The production expansion and creation of the new highspeed Formed Potato Specialty line enables McCain to meet the growing customer demand for the fast-growing market segment and also further strengthens the company’s potato processing presence both in Canada and North America. An estimated 80 new full-time jobs will be added…
The 2020 Ontario Potato Conference and Trade Show will be held in Guelph, Ont., at the Delta Hotel and Conference Center on Thursday, March 5, 2020. The agenda is still not finalized but should be ready by the middle of December. The trade show promises to be as interesting as ever. Lunch, coffee breaks and parking will be included in the registration fee. As always, the conference is supported by the Ontario Potato…
It’s been a tough harvest for many North American potato farmers. In my neck of the woods (northern North Dakota), August’s drought turned into rain that wouldn’t quit through September and then unseasonably frigid temperatures and deep snow just as harvest was ready to get rolling in October. Conditions have been changeable and challenging from Alberta through Manitoba, and Washington through Wisconsin. Difficult harvest conditions aren’t only hard on farmers; they’re hard…
By Jan Suszkiw, Public Affairs Specialist, USDA ARS WEST LAFAYETTE, INDIANA, November 5, 2019—Descendants of the fungus-like pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s—Phytophthora infestans—may have had a “helping hand” in recent U.S. outbreaks of the costly blight disease. Reporting in the September 2019 issue of Virus Research, a team of Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Cornell University (CU) and Rutgers University scientists announced they had identified a virus that infects P. infestans and appears to increase the pathogen’s…
Last month, McCain Foods USA, a leading supplier of frozen potato and snack food products across the country, celebrated the official start of construction of a 170,000-square-foot expansion at its Othello, Washington, potato processing facility. This $300 million investment will significantly expand McCain Foods North American production capacity through the addition of a state-of-the-art battered and conventional french fry processing line. Moreover, deepening McCain Foods’ commitment to Washington and the potato growing…
The World Potato Congress (WPC) is pleased to be offering its sixth webinar via Zoom in its 2019 series. The next webinar is to take place on Nov. 14, 2019, at 9 am EST with Kris Michiels presenting, “Illustration of Regional Potato Promotion: Flanders (Belgium).” Michiels is a marketing adviser at VLAM (Flanders’ Agricultural Marketing Board). Michiels graduated in 1977 as a commercial engineer at the Catholic University of Leuven. He has…
The North-Western European Potato Growers (NEPG) have come to a new harvest estimation for consumption potatoes in the leading five northwestern potato countries (France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain and Germany). If all potatoes are lifted, about 26.9 million tons will be harvested. This is 10 per cent more than last season and 1.8 per cent more than the five-year average. The years 2014 and 2017 brought much larger harvests. This season, the larger…
Potatoes are nature’s perfect energy storage capsules: ideally designed to withstand a period of dormancy and then burst into life as the next growing season approaches. For thousands of years, humans have benefitted from tubers’ unique dormancy adaptation. In the last 50 years, we’ve figured out how to benefit even more by expanding on nature’s design: now we produce tubers by the thousands of hundredweight; then manage them in storage for months…
The World Potato Congress Inc. (WPC) is pleased to announce that Adelaide, South Australia has been chosen as the site for its 2023 World Potato Congress. The following is the News Flash released on October 25, 2019 during Potatoes South Australia’s Annual Industry Dinner and Auction: Initiative And Innovation Wins The…. Potato Adelaide, South Australia has been named as the host city for the 2023 World Potato Congress (WPC), the first time…