Canada: Newfoundland’s first crop of nuclear seed potatoes unveiled

The provincial government’s Nuclear Seed Potato Propagation Facility showed off its first crop of nuclear seed potatoes yesterday, grown from plantlets produced at the facility. The potatoes, produced from disease-free tissue culture plantlets, are critical to the growth of a local potato industry, according to Federation of Agriculture President, Melvin Rideout. He says the new facility will help commercial potato farmers, like himself, grow potatoes for consumers, province-wide. “It provides us with clean, disease-free seed to put in the ground,” said Rideout. “Currently we’re bringing in seed from off-island. I’d say every year for the past five years we’ve struck a disease that has come in on a seed potato. With this facility, we should be alleviating all those incoming diseases that we don’t have here.” More