Get a taste of new talented Robust potato cultivars

In the Netherlands the organic sector keeps growing, but organic potato production is lagging behind. This is due to the relatively high disease pressure from Phytophthora infestans, which causes foliage and tuber late blight. For organic potato growers this disease still forms a major cropping risk. In the potato breeding programme Bioimpuls, the Louis Bolk Institute and Wageningen UR are working together with breeding companies and farmer-breeders to develop robust cultivars that are resistant to Phytophthora. Thanks to these new cultivars, organic growers now have more chance of yield security. The next step is to collaborate with organic wholesalers and retailers to make sure that the new cultivars reach the shop shelves and consumers’ plates. In the Netherlands, the organic market has already accepted new cultivars such as Bionica, Sarpo Mira and Carolus, but other cultivars are still relatively unknown, and additional promising cultivars will become available for the European market in the near future. Together, these cultivars will offer a complete assortment of boiling, baking and multi-purpose potatoes in various colours and shapes. The new talents are presented in this brochure

Various ways for successful Cultivar introduction in the market

Organic production requires novel, robust cultivars especially for crops such as apple, grape, tomato and potato which are very disease susceptible and are often protected by copper compounds. The European project CO-FREE aims to develop innovative methods, tools and concepts for the replacement of copper to reduce the use of copper in organic farming systems. One key strategy is the introduction of resistant cultivars. However, previous studies have shown that the introduction of novel cultivars often meets substantial obstacles as retailers’ and/or consumers’ awareness has to be generated in order to open the market. Resistance is an important issue for farmers but not immediately appealing for consumers as they are hardly aware of the fact that current cultivars are not always robust. In this brochure key obstacles and opportunities for market introduction of disease-resistant cultivars of apple and potato are described