Info on Amey wanted

[TZ-OH6]

Tom sent me an Amey (white russet) and it is acting unexpectedly. It bloomed a week or more before anything else, has blue flowers, and berry set on 8 of ten flowers.


I though most russets were white flowered, and since this is a CV not originating from Tom's breeding lines I didn't expect the high berry set.
Is what I'm seeing correct?

Thanks,

TZ

[wmontanez]

My Amey Russet is also flowering, light blue flowers, no berries yet

[Tom Wagner]

That makes three of us that can affirm that Amey Russet has light blue flowers

Amey Russet may not be out of my breeding lines but I have been growing it for close to 20 years and I helped inform the USDA on the flavor. It will self itself well, most years setting a few berries. Just like the Lenape pedigree it has in it. Amey can bloom early since it is very determinate and if the weather is just right, it will sense the need to bloom or Fugetaboutit.

I like writing about the Amey Russet, but is easier to just quote what others say about it.

Another interesting clone that was evaluated in this trial was the russet variety Amey. Amey was recently released by the USDA-ARS in cooperation with several eastern states including NC. We call Amey a “baby russet” because this variety produces a good crop of small to medium-sized russet potatoes that are very attractive in appearance and very tasty. We think that there may be a market for this so-called “baby russet” as growers and consumers become more familiar with it.

Amey (Fig. 3) is an attractive “baby russet” potato intended for table markets. This variety was released by the USDA-ARS in 2001. Our program has included this variety in 14 trials since 1995 but only in the SPC trial in 2004. It is well adapted to NC and has some resistance to Golden Nematode, Powdery Scab, and Common Scab. In the future we will continue to include this variety as it my have potential in a portion conscious environment, and provide a viable baking alternative to the large russets commonly available in stores.

Fig. 3 link… http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/specialty_c...s/image007.gif

Amey Russet, as you can see from the above photo is a very dark brown russet with intense white flesh. It is still one of my favorites for roasting and baking. No other potato smells the same coming out of the oven.

BTW, russets don't have to have white flowers. I think it is timely here to post an article I wrote about flower color as it pertains to russets. The following topic was never replied to and maybe folks have not seen the article at all. Few people are as interested in flower color in potatoes as I am. Having been involved as a cooperator with first year seedling tuber lines with breeders for over 40 years...gives me intimate knowledge of most potato varieties from the early breeding work through the naming of experimental lines. Growing some of the varieties of potatoes that my grandparents grew and the ones their grandparents grew..gives me a unique connection to potato varieties, past and present.

Topic: Flower color on Russet potatoes (Read 102 times) (tatermater forum) Sept 2009

Thanks to the following link, I was able to compose a list restricted to flower color and russeting. Just as I suspected, slightly over half have white flowers. Of the three dozen or so here, there is quite a range of potato flower colors.

I noticed one variety (that is a cross of Russet Nugget and Ranger Russet) has flowers closer to the Ranger Russet parent. I follow flower colors into the various progeny and that would take a while to relate to all the detail that I have in my records. Since I cross reds to russets, purples to russets, fingerlings to russets and so on, I am able to get more color types into russets.

One of my diploids (Thumbed Nose) is a russet with purple spectacles. The flowers are a brilliant blue.

Since the founding mother of so many russets is the Russet Burbank (white flowers) that portends mightily into the progenies showing so many that are white.

http://oregonstate.edu/potatoes/RatingKeyWeb.htm


Cultivar

A9305-10 red-purple

AC Stampede Russet violet (m)

Alta Russet blue-violet

Alturas Russet (A82360-7) white

AO96160-3 Lavender

AO96164-1 White

AOA95154-1 *red-purple

AOND95292-1Russ white

AOND95292-3Russ white

Bannock Russet white

Blazer Russet (A8893-1) white


Butte lt mauve (m)

Century Russet white, many

Coastal Russet md-violet (m)

Crestone Russet purple

Frontier Russet white, few

Gem Russet (A8495-1) white

Gem Star Russet (A9014-2) white

Highland Russet (A9045-7) red-purple

HiLite Russet white

Keystone Russet (AC83064-1) white

Klamath Russet red-purple

Lemhi Russet red-purple white tips

ND7882b-7Russ white

Nooksack white

Norgold Russet pink

Norking Russet red-purple (wh tips)


Ranger Russet blue-lavender (m)


Rio Grande Russet (AC 89536-5) lavender (many)


Russet Burbank white

Russet Legend white

Russet Norkotah white

Russet Nugget, white, many

Silverton Russet (AC83064-6) white

Summit Russet (A84118-3) white

TX1523-1Ru/Y (Sierra Gold) lavender

Umatilla Russet lt lavender-red

Wallowa (AO97277-6) pink-lavender

Western Russet (A7961-1) white

I have tens of thousands of TPS, no.... make that hundreds of thousands of true potato seed with a good number of the above list that are directly or several generations back in the pedigree of my true seed collection. All but eight of the above list have been used in breeding with my material.

Tom Wagner

I tried to find the color of flowers on the suspected male parent of Amey, and could not find the flower color for either BelRus or Russete. I wrote in an article somewhere indicating that the USDA has erroneous data on the purported male...the number listed my the USDA is not a russet and there is no way they could have come up with a russet with the official lineage. I think it is either BelRus or Russette is the male parent and I lean towards Russette simply because of the Lenape connection...better berry set and the F-2 Amey lines will throw some Lenape look a likes. The female line of Amey is an Atlantic sib...a cross of Wauseon and Lenape.

BelRus

ORIGIN: Released in 1978 by the United States Department of Agriculture - Beltsville, and the Agricultural Experiment Stations of Florida and Maine. BelRus was selected from the cross W245-2 X Penobscot and evaluated under the pedigree B7147-8.
RUSSETTE . A cross of LENAPE x W 245-2 USA 1981 Experimental # was USDA B 7583-6

I need to find the flower color for these two....now...where are my notes from 22 years ago???

Tom Wagner

[TZ-OH6]

Great news.

I collected pollen today and think I will try crossing it with Peanut, Nicola and Reich Tom for yellow flesh.

[Tom Wagner]

I have crosses of each of those growing now. Cool.

The Peanut cross (Mandel aka) that I have with John Tom Kaighin as the male parent is showing lots of diversity...perfect. A croos of Peant to Amey would give you some fingerling russets with either light yellow to white flesh with superb flavor. If Peanut was crossed by pollen from SVG, only a few seed will develop, and the likelihood of tetraploids is high, triploids, less so, but some near orange/yellow fleshed fingerlings would be awesome.

[TZ-OH6]

So you can use pollen from 2n plants on 4N flowers. I was thinking that the probablility of 1N pollen inactiveting ovules would be so high that you would never see any fruit set, and that it would work much better the other way with 2n pollen finding any/all unreduced (2n) ovules.

I started all of the little tubers you sent me in pots and one of the SVG pots was putting up a lot of sprouts so I cut it and also pulled off/replanted some sprouts so now I have a few small SVG plants that I can use for mother plants.

[wmontanez]

How your Amey did? I got 2 big potatoes, about 1/2lb each and I am not eating any yet, probably will eat one and save one for seed.

[TZ-OH6]

I haven't dug any yet because I have to organize some sort of storage space. I'll get to it pretty soon and post results.

[goodwin]

I have a couple small to mid size tubers from one plant of Amey's, and 3 berries from which I have extracted seed. My Nordic Octobers and Skagit Valley Golds have also set a couple of berries apiece.
Here's something I haven't seen before, but Tom and others probably have. It's some kind of 'tuber' growing at a joint on the stem well up on the plant. Anyway, hope everyone is having a good season.

Lee

[Farmette]

I think my potatoes are ready to be dug up. Some time ago I noticed berries on several plants, but now when I went to retrieve them, I do not see them. Could they have fallen or blown off...do you have to retrieve them at a certain point in the growing process?
Thanks
Chris

[wmontanez]

I took mine while they were still attached to the plant, that way I knew what plant it was from...but I did find some in the soil near my yukon and blue potato patch while harvesting

[Tom Wagner]

I am going to answer several questions here.

1. Amey Russet can often be a very low set potato variety. That means that if the growing conditions are just such, low counts of one or two tubers in not unheard of. At least the tubers get some size on them and that is important when it comes to a russet....especially for french fries and baked potato use.

2. Aerial tubers. http://www.potatodiseases.org/images...al--tubers.jpg

If stolons and underground stems are severely infected, the flow of starch from the leaves to the developing tubers is interrupted. This results in small, green tubers, called aerial tubers forming on the stem above the soil (Fig. 4). Formation of aerial tubers may indicate that the plant has no tubers of marketable quality below ground.

Aerial tubers can be formed resulting from quite a range of circumstances....breaking of the stem below the aerial tuber by wind damage, insect damage, disease damage (rhizoc), overly wet soil, etc.


3. Aerial tubers on sprouting potatoes in storage. Some varieties are prone to this malady. However, I utilize this varietal phenomena and save those aerial tubers for replanting, especially if I am trying to save tubers from potatoes that are nearly two years old.


4. Potato berries have an abscission zone on the pedicel that forms anywhere from weeks to 8 weeks after blooming. The berries "pop" off with the most gentle wind, foot traffic along the row. That abscission zone is varietal, some do it, some don't. I have done much breeding work to select for varieties that attach themselve to the vine even when the plant dies down. I have to mine the potato field like a detective to follow my potato berries back to the mother plant. It takes a lot of practice to verify the mother plant...looking at the freshly detaced berry to the flower truss to 'match' the scar on the pedicel.


5. Potato berries either fall from the mother plant...or are picked....much before the fruit is really ripe-ripe. It is a mature green potato berry much like a tomato can be a mature green. The berry will ripen post harvest for a few weeks to even months before soft ripe. The whole mentality of a potato berry is to roll out of range of the tuber plant to emerge as seedlings years after. Berries can be carried away by rodents only to be dropped elsewhere when the rodents discover it is not pleasant to eat. Rain and wind can take the dried remains fall from the original home.


6. I had a cool and wet Spring which delayed the growth of potatoes and also delayed my planting of tubers. My harvest is delayed in turn. This week will be my major berry picking time as most of the flowers set about 6 weeks ago or more.