Hybrid Potato Breeding Method Wins 2012 Food Valley Award

The potato is one of the top 3 of food crops worldwide, but considerably more efficient in its use of water and soil nutrients than rice and wheat. Seed breeders and the food industry believe potatoes could become far more important in the future, as a healthy staple that helps feed the growing world population.

29 Oct 2012 --- Healthy, high-quality, naturally disease-resistant potatoes whose color, taste, shape and starch composition can be customized to the client’s wishes. Growers are one big step closer to achieving this thanks to Solynta’s new, patented, hybrid potato breeding method. The method will dramatically speed up potato breeding, which creates great opportunities for the entire potato chain.

Currently, breeding a new potato variety can require anywhere from 10 to 50 years. Solynta has reduced that to as little as 3 to 5 years. Carefully selected inbred parent lines are used to create new and improved potato varieties at an unprecedented pace. Solynta’s success is based on years of dedicated research, the selection of smart combinations of genetic material, large numbers of hybrids and highly specific selection methods. The new method makes it much easier and faster to breed in desirable properties and eliminate undesirable ones. Another innovation is the use of seed rather than tubers as reproduction material. Not only does this fast-track the breeding process, it also has major logistical advantages. Fifteen grams of seed suffices to sow 1 acre of land, as opposed to 2,200 lbs. of tubers. “Winning the Dutch Food Valley Award is absolutely great. We’re now doing so well that we’re trying to attract partners, so winning this award will help enormously,” says Pim Lindhout, Head of Solynta Research & Development.

The potato is one of the top 3 of food crops worldwide, but considerably more efficient in its use of water and soil nutrients than rice and wheat. Seed breeders and the food industry believe potatoes could become far more important in the future, as a healthy staple that helps feed the growing world population. “This breeding method and the resulting hybrid potato varieties will have a great impact on the industry and on society at large. We, the judges, commend Solynta’s strategy of cooperating with various parties that all benefit from their innovation's added value and resulting new products,” says Jan Maat, Chairman of the Food Valley Award Judges’ Panel.

The other two nominees for this year’s Food Valley Award were Cropwatch’s Scoutbox, a tool for highly efficient pest management in greenhouses, and Hoogesteger’s Fresh Micro Pulse technology, which extends the shelf-life of freshly-squeezed fruit juice.

This year’s Food Valley Award winner was announced at the Food Valley Expo, an annual innovation showcase organized for representatives from the agrifood industry. Food Valley Expo is organized by Food Valley in cooperation with many businesses, research institutes and intermediaries. This year’s event coincided with the AgriFood Career Event at Papendal Conference Center in Arnhem, the Netherlands. This turned out to be a fruitful combination. The number of visitors from various European countries, but also as far away as Brazil, the USA and several Asian countries, exceeded 1,000.