North Dakota State Seed Department Safeguards Potato Crops
In partnership with: North Dakota Department of Agriculture
The North Dakota State Seed Department inspects and tests all seed crops grown in the state – everything from cereals to soybeans and other oil seed crops, as well as pulse crops and potatoes.
“Our potato seed stock program is a small part of a larger program area, but it’s extremely important because we’re creating the first generation of a potato crop,” says Ken Bertsch, seed commissioner.
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Tended With Time
Potatoes are different than any other seed crop because they’re vegetative.
“You don’t harvest seeds like you would from wheat, soybean or other crops we consider field crops,” Bertsch says. “You start with a plantlet in a test tube. From the test tube, a technician snips little pieces out of the mother plant and plants them in a gelatin media.”
Bertsch explains they let those plants grow up, cut them again and mass propagate plantlets. This is done multiple times over a three- to four-month period before there are enough plantlets to plant in the greenhouse. When the plantlets are ready for the greenhouse, they’re placed in disease-free peat soil.
“We let those plants grow for 70 to 90 days to produce small potatoes called mini tubers,” Bertsch says. “They represent the nuclear generation of seed potatoes – the first generation ready to be planted in the field. It takes about 60,000 plantlets to plant one season’s worth of production.”
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Playing the Long Game
Potato production is an exceedingly complicated, high-cost, high-risk exercise.
“Potatoes are very disease susceptible plants,” says Charles Elhard, North Dakota Department of Agriculture plant protection officer. “It’s important to manage that seed stock to make sure you’re not increasing disease pressure, especially viruses, starting with tissue culture all the way up.”
Potato production follows a multiyear cycle, where usually in the third or fourth year, farmers in northeast North Dakota grow another generation of seed or sell to a commercial producer.
“That’s when commercial growers produce the crop that’s eaten in your home or made into french fries or something else,” Bertsch says.
Growing the potatoes is a much lengthier process than most consumers realize as they select their potato products from grocery aisles.
“Your potatoes in the grocery store are, you could say, 5 years old before they get into the bag,” Elhard says.
Next time you enjoy potatoes for dinner, remember the multiyear journey it took to reach your plate, and thank the North Dakota State Seed Department as well as all the state’s growers.