Ireland as we know it, but with purple spuds

Ever wanted all the goodness of a berry in a bag of crisps? Enter the purple potato. Paul Watts, a scientist from the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI), tells us: “We developed Purple Magic after years of screening through large numbers of seedlings and picking the best. The plant needed to be high-yielding, with disease-resistance qualities, so we crossed some flavourful heritage varieties with some of the hardy varieties you’d see in the supermarket. The idea was to boost the overall levels of anthocyanins by having them in the flesh as well as the skin.” This has been a long process, as Watts indicates is common in generating new crop varieties. “We made the first cross for Purple Magic back in 2003 – that’s 13 years of research that has gone into this product.” The purple potato has a high dry matter content, which means that it has strong flavour while still being fryable enough to be turned into crisps and chips. More