US: Spud leaders hope to continue breeding collaboration

A collaborative effort involving cooperation from the major U.S. potato breeding programs to identify potatoes low in acrylamide, which may be linked to cancer, is winding up, but participants hope to continue working together on other challenges. Rich Novy, a potato breeder with the local USDA Agricultural Research Service, and his colleagues spent Sept. 16 evaluating an assortment of their own lines and material from all of the major U.S. breeding programs. The spuds were entries in the National Fry Processing Trials, a collaborative breeding effort started five years ago in response to industry concerns about acrylamide — a chemical found in certain fried foods linked to cancer in testing of laboratory animals. More