The provincial government of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Nuclear Seed Potato Propagation Facility showed off its first crop of nuclear seed potatoes last week, grown from plantlets produced at the facility.
The potatoes, produced from disease-free tissue culture plantlets, are critical to the growth of a local potato industry, according to Federation of Agriculture president Melvin Rideout. He says the new facility will help commercial potato farmers like himself grow potatoes for consumers province-wide.
“It provides us with clean, disease-free seed to put in the ground,” said Rideout. “Currently we’re bringing in seed from off-island. I’d say every year for the past five years we’ve struck a disease that has come in on a seed potato. With this facility, we should be alleviating all those incoming diseases that we don’t have here.”
It will take a few years before the nuclear seeds are ready for commercial production. Facility manager Adam Fitzpatrick says it’s been a labor-intensive, busy first season.
“There are some growing pains,” Fitzpatrick said. “Potatoes are a cool climate crop, so within a greenhouse you have issues with temperatures and whatnot. So it has been a struggle, but every season you learn and develop new ways of doing things. There are issues with the weather, as you can appreciate, but we’ve adjusted as best we can, and have had some great success.”
The Nuclear Seed Potato Propagation Facility was established after the closure of the Canadian federal government’s Plant Health Facility in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. It opened in late 2014, and propagated its first potato plantlets in 2015.
Source: VOCM Local News