Sustainability in 2016 is all about balance

One of the meanings of ‘sustainable’ is ‘produced or acquired in a way that burdens the environment and nature as little as possible. Defining the term in more depth it also means ‘taking into account that energy resources, food and raw materials are not going to be endlessly available’. Sustainability in 2016 ultimately means to find a balance between what you put into a product and what you get out of it. In this context, the potato scores are already particularly high in comparison to many other important food crops in the world. Naturally, there’s always room for improvement and therein lies, among other things, a major task for the breeders. With the help of breeding, varieties can be developed that need even less fertiliser, plant protection and water, with the added advantage that they can also produce more kilograms of net raw produce per square metre. Hence the question put to all breeding stations present at the 2015 Variety Presentations, namely which eye-catching, sustainable variety do they have in store for us in the coming decades.