The new kid on the potato block, an import from Eastern Canada, is attracting interest from growers in Manitoba.
But some processors are skeptical that it has potential to bump off the venerable Russet Burbank, which accounts for 80 percent of the spud acres in the province.
Prospect, a red potato variety owned and developed by Maritime-based company Cavendish Farms, was originally bred by crossing early maturing Shepody with an older variety known as Russette.
It is said to enjoy greater verticillium wilt resistance (potato early dying syndrome), greater nitrogen efficiency and drought resistance, which is an attractive quality for growers on non-irrigated acres.
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Cavendish Farms crop specialist Robert Coffin, who lives in Kensington, P.E.I., said his wife, Joyce, developed the variety in breeding experiments that began in 1990. It was registered in 2005, and is now the property of Cavendish Farms.
Coffin said the variety’s documented resistance to verticillium wilt offers growers plagued with the disease a way to reduce chemical use on their farms.
“In some areas of the United States, if you told growers that they couldn’t fumigate their soil to stop early dying, they’d have to stop growing potatoes,” said Coffin.
Genetic resistance to verticillium wilt offers huge advantages, something that the dominant variety Russett Burbank lacks, he added.
“Burbank crashes out real early. In the mid-summer it starts to wobble because the soil is loaded with verticillium and it’s very susceptible. But that Prospect variety has displayed excellent resistance and for many years has come out with the highest marketable yield,” said Coffin.
As the reigning king of french fry potatoes, the late maturing Russet Burbank’s strongest attribute is its longevity in storage, however, Coffin said the variety’s tendency toward sugar ends, which blacken the tips of french fries, has some growers looking elsewhere.
Prospect typically has five big, brick-shaped tubers and few smalls, but some say that the reason it hasn’t taken off commercially is because it has lower specific gravity and shelf life may be inferior to the old standby Russet Burbank.
In a panel discussion of potato varieties at the Canada-Manitoba research centre in Carberry, Man., Aug. 19, Andrew Ronald, head agronomist for processing giant McCain, said Russet Burbank would likely remain the dominant variety until something better comes along.
“As a variety, it has been often described as the devil you know. We’ve learned a lot about it because we’ve grown it for a long time,” he said.
“It’s weak in a lot of areas, but it’s not really bad in any one area.”
The fact that Prospect is a variety controlled by competitor Cavendish Farms, which operates a processing plant in North Dakota, could be part of what makes it less appealing to McCain, he added.
“I get seed a bit for trials, but we can’t get seed at a commercial level to grow it,” he said.
Ronald said that Prospect does have some strengths in terms of moisture stress and resistance to early dying syndrome but it tends to have a lower specific gravity than even Shepody.
“Processing-wise, it’s pretty middle-of-the-road to below average, from what we can tell.”
New varieties often show promise in terms of fry colour and tuber shape and size, but they may bruise in storage and suffer too many defects.
“A variety may strong in three out of four areas, but it’s often so bad in that fourth area that it tends to make us turn our nose up at it,” Ronald said.
He added the testing of new varieties is ongoing, but customer expectations must always come first.
David Rose, a Simplot agronomist, said he was not familiar with the Prospect variety.
While Russet Burbank makes up about 80 percent of its contracted acres, new trials in North Dakota have shown that Bannock and Premier, both russet types, are showing some promise, especially in terms of storage longevity.
