'pre-nuclear' seed potatoes?

[emmers]

My Irish eyes catalog is offering 'pre-nuclear' (grown from tissue culture) seed potatoes this year, at more than a dollar per itty bitty potato.

I usually buy the small tubers anyway so I can plant them whole(soggy soil in the spring), and I don't know if the pre-nuclear ones are worth a shot. They seem to be saying the normal tubers they sell are several generations descended from the pre-nuclear.

They claim 25-200x yields, but I don't want 200 'large blueberry' size potatoes

Will the pre-nuclear tubers (tubies?) produce full size potatoes? Is there a substantial advantage in vigor, as they claim?

~emmers

[Tom Wagner]

My Irish eyes catalog is offering 'pre-nuclear' (grown from tissue culture) seed potatoes this year, at more than a dollar per itty bitty potato.

That is not a bad price per tuber. When I produced nuclear generation potatoes of Lumper, Nordic October and Skagit Valley Gold, I had to pay about 65 cents per tuber and that was at the 1,000 tuber lots. The mini tubers are produced from plantlets which were transplanted to the greenhouse and are harvested as tiny tubers the size of blueberries to quarters. These are free of any trace of disease...no scab, no virus, just super clean stock to generate the next level of nuclear seed potatoes which then goes on to at least two more increases with the potato certifier.

I usually buy the small tubers anyway so I can plant them whole(soggy soil in the spring), and I don't know if the pre-nuclear ones are worth a shot. They seem to be saying the normal tubers they sell are several generations descended from the pre-nuclear.

When you say you buy the small tubers that means you are buying "B" sized tubers-not mini tubers. And these are usually two or more generations from mini tubers.

They claim 25-200x yields, but I don't want 200 'large blueberry' size potatoes

Just because you are buying a tuber the size of a blueberry doesn't mean your production will be small potatoes. The mini tubers are so free of any disease they often outyield certified seed potatoes. The size of minitubers, which range from 2 grams to 30 grams when combined into a unit of 300 lbs. of mini tubers can plant an acre of potatoes...compared to 2,000 or more lbs. of cut seed potatoes. Therefore a yield of 60,000 lbs of potato yields per acre is a 200 fold increase by weight.

Will the pre-nuclear tubers (tubies?) produce full size potatoes? Is there a substantial advantage in vigor, as they claim?

The plants start out a bit smaller since the sprout emerging from the soil is less thick, but it will grow into a full size vine.

The major advantage of growing potatoes form mini tubers is that you are not introducing scab, rhizoc, etc into clean soil that never had potatoes before. And.... you can save your potatoes back for replanting since they were not exposed directly to diseases that even certified seed potatoes may have and transmit.

[wingnut]

Easy to produce your own from Toms seed grown in sterile potting soil in a screenhouse. I have also produced them under lights indoors....same deal sterile potting soil/lack of sucking insects....equate to very clean mini/micro tubers.