Seed of Success

This article appears in Potato Grower's Idaho Annual 2020 issue.

The 2020 growing season in Idaho was relatively uneventful—a welcome change from last year! 

The season began with good weather, and planting was completed without serious interruption. Good growing conditions continued throughout the season and into harvest.  As this article is being written, many Idaho seed growers have already completed harvest. Yields are reported as good, and seed quality going into storage is reported as good to excellent. The 2020 crop appears to have a very nice size profile.

Seed health is also good this year. During summer inspections, the number of seed lots with visually detectable levels of PVY was the lowest it has been in 10 years. Additionally, there were no detections of bacterial ring rot during field inspections.

At the conclusion of the second round of field inspections, a total of 30,068 acres are eligible for final certification this year. This is essentially unchanged from 2019. Excluding proprietary genetics, the 2020 acreage accepted for certification represents a total of 144 varieties, selections and advanced clones. 

For 2020, the top varieties were Russet Burbank (35 percent of total acreage accepted), Russet Norkotah (all strains, 19 percent of total), Ranger Russet (11 percent), Clearwater Russet (5 percent), Alturas (4 percent) and Umatilla Russet (2 percent). Russet Burbank acreage was down approximately 11 percent from last year, while Russet Norkotah and Alturas acreage increased 7 and 18 percent, respectively. A complete listing of this year’s seed potato crop is available in the 2019 Idaho Certified Seed Potato Directory, posted on the Idaho Crop Improvement, Inc. website at www.idahocrop.com.

Top 10 Varieties Grown for Seed in Idaho, 2020