Stress test must be ready for practical use in three years

The stress test, which identifies weak batches of potatoes at an early stage, should be able to be applied in practice in 3 years' time. The Chain Project for Improving Seed Potato Quality has been extended by 3 years for this purpose.

The stress test provides the potato sector with a tool that can be used to predict whether seed batches have an increased risk of emergence problems in progeny crops. In the past 3 years, various variants of the test have been investigated within the chain project. The most successful stress test identifies almost all parties with an attendance problem due to poor output quality. Further research is needed to prepare the test for practical application.

More insight into causes
The Chain Project for Improving Seed Potato Quality (2017-2019) has therefore been extended by 3 years. In addition to preparing the stress test for practicality, the chain parties united in this chain project want to gain further insight into the main causes of emergence problems in the chain. In recent years, it has already been shown that approximately 40% of emergence problems are related to the exit quality. In 60% of the cases, a reduction in quality in the logistics process between seed potato cultivation and consumption cultivation appears to cause emergence problems.

Up to 50 percent failure
In 2016 in particular, the problems with the rise of seed potatoes. At that time, there was talk of a 10 to 20% dropout, and even outliers of 50%. Reason for setting up the Chain Project for Improving Seed Potato Quality, in which the following parties now participate: LTO, NAV, VAVI, NAO, BO Akkerbouw, NAK, HZPC, Agrico, Meijer, Aviko, Agristo, McCain, LWM, Farm Frites, Nedato and Kleinjan .

Jeanette Pennings

Jeannet has her roots in the flower bulb sector and she grew up on an agricultural company in the northern part of North Holland. As a generalist she reports for Boerenbusiness across all sectors. She is also exploring the possibilities of sponsored advertising.

j.pennings@boerenbusiness. Nl

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