For years, farmers have needed potatoes that could be stored longer and didn’t scab to meet the needs of the chip industry. After two decades of work, researchers at Michigan State University developed five new potato varieties they say meet growers’ needs.
Michigan is the leading state for growing chipping potatoes in the country.
According to the Michigan Industry Potato Commission, one in four bags of chips contain Michigan-grown potatoes.
Kelly Turner, is the executive director for the Michigan Industry Potato Commission. She said potato industry generates $2.5 billion per year for Michigan and supply’s 21,700 jobs.
“I've always been proud to say that we're no small potatoes,” Turner said. “We know we're big potatoes.”
Turner says growers across the state need potatoes that can withstand weather as the climate changes.
The five new potato breeds – Manistee, Mackinaw, Petoskey, Huron Chipper and Blackberry – were designed by researchers at MSU to be resilient in unpredictable weather, resist viruses and be stored for longer.
Turner said the new potatoes will help farmers lower input costs.
“The more resistant or resilient that plan is to catching potato diseases, the less chemicals and chemistries and pesticides that growers need to us," Turner said. "That's good for the grower, that's good for the environment, that's good for everybody."
David Douches is the lead potato researcher at MSU. Douches said he started breeding potatoes at the university in 1987.
“What the potato industry said to me is, we need potatoes that are resistant to scab and we need potatoes that will hold their sugars better and store longer,” Douches said.
As years went by, farmers’ needs only grew.
“The secret to agriculture is through plant breeding that we develop resilient varieties,” Douches said. “Ones that can handle the vagaries of the weather that hit the farmers every year when they grow their crops.”
Douches said growers also wanted potatoes that absorbed less oil during the chip-making process.
The Petoskey variety of spuds does just that – all while resisting scabbing and holding chip color in storage.
Douches says it’s difficult to breed potatoes – especially when combining so many traits – because potatoes have twice as many chromosomes as humans.
“Every year we make hundreds of crosses,” Douches said. “We grow 40,000 to 60,000 seedlings every year and any one of those thousands of seedlings could potentially be variety because everyone is genetically different from one another.”
In recent years, Douches said MSU started testing their breeds in states around the country so the spuds could thrive in different climates.
There will never be the "perfect" potato, according to Douches. But farmers in Michigan and across the country are growing new potatoes.
Douches says MSU is already working to develop an even better breed.
