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