March 23, 2022 | Articles

Variety Days 2021: What do breeders focus on in present-day potato breeding?

To be able to inform our visitors in advance about the number of participants at the recently held live (!) International Variety Days, Potato World magazine had produced an e-book in advance, which was available free of charge on the internet. Anyone who had downloaded the digital information booklet was asked by the editors about…

March 23, 2022 | Articles

At the Farm of the Future, soil structure and soil health are top priorities

At the Dutch Farm of the Future, developed on the Field Crops site of Wageningen University & Research (WUR) in Lelystad, the potato plays a leading role. If only because the cropping plan provides twice as much area for potatoes as for the other six crops with which it is alternated. Senior researcher sustainable agriculture Pieter…

September 23, 2021 | Articles

Keeping up with the times, driving force in almost 100 years of seed potato cultivation

The seed potato company of the Ryckaert family from Assenede is a household name in Belgium, and they are also no strangers for many colleagues in the Dutch sector. With almost a century of knowledge and experience in potato multiplication, that is not surprising. Keeping up with the times is the driving force in their…

September 23, 2021 | Articles

Haulm killing with a hybrid electric method requires less power

Hybrid electric crop protection. This is how Australian crop protection chemical company Nufarm and the German start-up CROP.ZONE describe their new invention, NuCrop for chemical-free weed control and haulm killing in potatoes. It combines the technique of electrocution with a special fluid for better current conduction, which requires less (motor) power and achieves more capacity…

September 23, 2021 | Articles

Professor Richard Visser (WUR): ‘Growth of EU organic area without gene editing will definitely result in decreasing crop yields’

In a recently published manifesto, agricultural scientists in the European Union call for the admission of new breeding techniques such as gene editing in European organic farming. This may seem like handing a vegetarian a sausage and saying that it is essential for his or her health, but Professor Richard Visser, one of the authors,…

June 04, 2021 | Articles

European potato growers store potatoes without chlorpropham

In Europe, the European Commission has decided that potato growers are no longer allowed to use chlorpropham in the storage of potatoes. This ban on the product used for decades to store ware and starch potatoes is a real game changer in the European potato sector. Innovative Dutch growers are sharing their initial experiences with…

February 26, 2021 | Articles

Variety presentations 2020: different from usual

Different from usual. That was how things were for many breeding and seed potato trading houses in the Netherlands at the annual Variety Show that normally takes place at the beginning of the month of November. Live meetings were often cancelled, at a few companies they only took place on a small scale and were…

February 26, 2021 | Articles

All sustainable solutions under one roof in “the storehouse of the future”

Builders are busy constructing ‘the storehouse of the future’ at arable farmer Tonnie van Peperstraten’s farm in Oude Tonge. A multi-million dollar project that incorporates all the latest insights and techniques for the coming years, taking into account product quality and sustainability. We recently came to see how environmentally-friendly the potato storage will soon be.

November 25, 2020 | Articles

‘Policy can only be determined on the basis of science’

A beautiful and healthy green potato crop. That’s what lobbyist Iris Bouwers likes to see on her own farm. So it’s not surprising that she has the topic of Plant Health high on her agenda for Brussels. ‘If you feel that things are not going too well with the commodities policy, you shouldn’t just look…

November 25, 2020 | Articles

Fertigation: From wait-and-see attitude to necessity

In recent years, various research projects with drip irrigation and fertigation have already been carried out in the potato sector and they have been described in detail in several articles. Every year, projects are being started in every corner of the Netherlands. Also at Van Iperen, supplier of fertilisers and crop protection agents in the…