POTATO BERRIES: Loaded for Ber....ries

[Tom Wagner]

Carloads of potato berries being boxed up to head out for processing into TPS!
These are berries picked November 2, 2012 near Mt. Vernon, WA and this is just a sample of what I have already picked and much more to pick yet.

The first picture is showing two boxes on the left being SKAGIT DRAGONS, the box on the left is YUNGAY and the box in the back on the right is MURU


[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/mvVc5.jpg[/IMG]


The picture below shows a single tuber from one of the SKAGIT DRAGONS family and the many berries produced from it. Notice the blue fruit...much like the INDIGO ROSE tomatoes....light mediated purple/blue potato berries. The maternal grandparent of this tuber is SKAGIT VALLEY GOLD and the tuber shows many of the same characteristics. Because these are diploids....all the seed is hybrid seed..since diploids are obligatory outcrossers. Neato!

The YUNGAYS are also hybrid F-1 seed since it has a male sterile trait. Seems YUNGAY flowers are especially attractive to pollen carrying insects. I have grown YUNGAY potatoes in Skagit county for nine years...same as for SKAGIT VALLEY GOLD and the blight resistance is still effective. This is the forth year that SKAGIT VALLEY GOLD has been planted in this very plot...and the blight hits all summer long and only blight resistant potato varieties bloomed profusely this year. Therefore, the hybrid seed is doubly blight resistant!

This very plot had SVG in 2009, it's hybrid SKAGIT MAGIC in 2010, and the next hybrid...SKAGIT DRAGONS ...a family of TPS seedlings of 144 weeded down from 2011 to about 80 for 2012. BTW...crosses of the SKAGIT DRAGONS in this same plot were 90% blight resistant...the best being PUFF..THE MAGIC DRAGON!. Next year I should have all five generations in this plot....
1st gen. SVG
2nd gen. SKAGIT MAGIC
3rd gen. SKAGIT DRAGONS
4th gen. PUFF..THE MAGIC DRAGON
5th gen. TPS seedlings of P..TMD.

[Tom Wagner]

The row of SKAGIT DRAGONS looked like this around the first of October.




To give you a perspective on the value of potato berries....each berry has enough seed to produce transplants for a row 100 to 200 ft long! For a row one mile long.....only 50 berries are needed.

[Fusion_power]

You might comment on these if you choose Tom. These were taken August 21'st 2012.

Flowers on healthy plants




Another selection blooming




This one is healthy 3 ft plants in the foreground and some 5 ft plants in the background.




This pic demonstrates just how brutal late blight is in Tom's planting.

DarJones

[Tom Wagner]

DarJones

Thanks for reminding me and others that late blight can make most potato varieties pikers in the yield department as this patch proves. With repeated waves of blight knocking leaves into black remnants and with some varieties only infecting flower structures...suitable pollen parents and receptor parents made the breeding work suffering the template of LB resistant only; thus only successes in this narrow confine.

DarJones, a good number of those photos taken by your associate were of diploids...but my memory is not accurate enough to indicate the variety!

If the readership will go back to the first photo of this topic...you will see a box of YUNGAY potato berries in a box ...lower right...I had picked those on the 2nd and today I processed around 800 berries out of that box. The fruits were relatively large and the seed per berry was somewhere between 120/200. The fruits were put through a blender at slow speeds to crush the berries. The pulp was separated and the seed was settled in the bottom of hot 120 F. water and then treated with TSP and then a chlorine rinse.

The seed appears to number close to my estimate of around 100,000 150,000 TPS. These are 100% hybrid seed since YUNGAY is male sterile. The male parents are whatever the pollen laden insects carried with them to the flowers of YUNGAY, and each of those had to be blight resistant since susceptible clones were unable to produce healthy flowers. The hybrid TPS will be a featured part of my dispersal for years to come. The potential of the amount of seed extracted today could easily produce 75 tons of potato tubers if done right in one season.

Here is a photo of the clean seed just before drying

[Redbaron]

Am I reading that post right? Your seeds are LB resistant because instead of clones you breed seeds and only LB resistant varieties are able to produce seeds in your program?

[Fusion_power]

Scott, Tom typically has only one strain of late blight per year to deal with. Recently, it is been US-24 or US-8. The resistant genetics for these two strains are relatively widespread compared to resistance to some of the more devastating strains. In other words, it is a constant battle to integrate new resistance genes into the pool of breeding plants. There are currently about a dozen identified resistance genes that are being worked with so potatoes can stay ahead of late blight.

There are some new highly effective genes that Tom will need to add to the mix within the next 2 or 3 years just to stay ahead of the blight. The bad part is that after 10 or so years, late blight manages to breach most of the resistance genes. In particular, R-8 and R-9 are needed and at some point, the genes from S. Bulbanocastum will be required.

DarJones