Using tropical varieties to make significant improvements
In Vietnam, HZPC is working with the potato institute CIP (International Potato Centre) to develop five new potato varieties for tropical conditions. Wichard Sanders, as a breeder at HZPC, deals with tropical varieties and is closely involved in this project.
Of course, conditions in tropical regions vary substantially from countries like the Netherlands. The light, irradiance, precipitation and humidity are all different. And so that also calls for a potato variety that performs well in those conditions. Wichard: ‘Close to the equator, in tropical regions, they always have about 12 hours of darkness and 12 hours of light per day. As a result, the plants will look different from here in the Netherlands. Moreover, they do not have a real winter there, but very wet or rather dry periods. As a result, they can realise two shorter crops in a year. That means you will harvest a variety after a short growing period and the variety will only have a short period of dormancy so you can quickly start the next crop. Most of HZPC’s existing varieties do not fit into that growing system and appropriate disease resistance is lacking. There are also diseases that we do not have in the Netherlands. We may be familiar with the viruses but their prevalence is different from what we are used to.’
Reaping the benefits later
The Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture is funding the project in Vietnam out of a desire to raise the profile of potatoes in Indonesia and develop better varieties for the conditions there. There are various practical reasons why the project is running in Vietnam and not in Indonesia: ‘It is much more difficult to work in Indonesia because you cannot import materials as a result of the quarantine policy. It is also more difficult to send materials from Indonesia to the Netherlands and you never know whether it will be of sufficient quality. We started looking around and ended up in Vietnam. This is similar to Indonesia in terms of climate, it is easier to bring material in and the country has breeders’ rights protection. If you develop a variety there, you can protect it there too. And even better: the people there are young and eager to learn. They realise that subsequent generations will reap the rewards of the work they are doing now. They are therefore open to new things’, Wichard explains.
Suprise effect
‘We are collaborating with CIP for this project because they have been breeding in the tropics for some time. They have selected genetics that are better adapted to tropical conditions than HZPC’s varieties. We have varieties that look fantastic but these traits might be lacking in the CIP varieties, along with certain resistances. We therefore crossed a CIP parent with an HZPC parent to combine the best of both.’ In 2017, seeds from this material were sown for the first time in Vietnam. The past few years have been dominated by propagation and selection of the best individuals in trial fields spread across Vietnam. Meanwhile, plants from those individuals were brought to the Netherlands in a test tube via the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority. In Metslawier, Wichard has the facilities and resistance tests to test a variety more extensively and he can use the seed potatoes for the first time in the breeding company’s trial fields in the Netherlands. Wichard: ‘That is perhaps the best part of my job: digging up the varieties in the trial field and then seeing whether what you put in then comes out again. That surprise effect is always amazing.’
‘With these varieties we can genuinely improve potato growing.’
Acceptable and a good yield
‘In Europe, our bar is set very high. We can test for 40 traits that we all consider important, including the quality of the potato, its susceptibility to bruising, and defects on the inside and outside of the tuber. The CIP has mainly developed varieties that provide food security for the grower. In our opinion, that is a basic level that is quickly exceeded by adding one extra resistance gene, for example. The question then becomes whether that is sustainable in the long run. To develop this, we have now crossed new genetics from HZPC at CIP. ‘Ultimately we will end up with a variety with characteristics that are acceptable to HZPC and which provide a good yield and allow a grower to sell more product’, says Wichard.
Sustainability at heart
The aim of the project is to develop about five potato varieties that give good yields and meet customer requirements. Growers in Southeast Asia use a lot of chemicals. By adding more resistances into these new varieties, chemical use can be reduced while maintaining or even improving yields. It also ensures that farmers have an ongoing income, as they are better able to grow and sell potatoes all year round. And instead of seed potatoes for existing varieties being transported from Europe to Southeast Asia, the new varieties allow seed potatoes to be grown and propagated for HZPC locally. ‘Sustainability should not be just a slogan. It should not just be in our heads, but also at the heart of HZPC. Not because this makes us good people, but mainly because we can then genuinely improve potato cultivation with these varieties. There is still much work to be done in this project when it comes to resistances, for example. In Vietnam, they have a great saying for this: a grain of rice costs a bowl of sweat and a bowl of tears. It is no different with potato breeding.’