This year I seem to get my first crop of true potato seed (TPS) from a diverse genetic pool. I got small tubers last year and they’re growing well this year, setting flowers and the first fruit.
Criteria
Long term goal is to be able to direct sow potatoes. In the first phase I want to produce my own seed and get enough so I can live with the huge losses of direct sowing initially.
No long rhizomes. I want to be able to identify easily which plant has which tubers.
No sprouting while in winter storage.
No tuberization at very high soil level or above.
Productivity
Color and shape diversity
Flavor and utility. My goal is to first isolate 2-3 different groups from the pool, mostly depending on their starch content (baking potatoes (high starch), all-round potatoes (medium starch) and “eating potatoes” as we call them (low starch and keeps their shape during cooking). After that, we will probably start selecting for flavor more. I don’t have a precise strategy yet other than staying open and curious to explore potatoes more!
2025
Drought took most of the potato plants before I had time to mulch them. About 10 plants survived and I saved the tubers for replanting.
Really awesome project Malte! I am planning to do something similar over here in Sweden. Grew my first tps potatoes this year, which I will plant next year for seeds, aswell as trying to force a few different varieties of potatoes to produce seeds this year, to start selecting next year.
Looking forwards to seeing how your project goes and would be willing to exchange seeds for our respective projects (once things start to get rolling, dont have any seeds to offer this season).
How did you select the potato-cultivars for producing seeed? I guess you need som highly blight resistant varieties to reach the state of giving potato-fruits? I have collection of good potatoes, where 3-4 cultivars can give fruits . The remaining cultivars can at least hopefully pollinate. Last year I collected the fruits, unfortunately they disappeard. I planned to try sowing them.
I didn’t start from any cultivars, I started from TPS last year! So the beginning was already diverse. My limited experience and understanding so far is that potatoes from true seed tend to be less susceptible for disease, because it hasn’t been building up as it does in clonal tubers. Hence why most potato varieties disappear after a while from disease pressure and you get new ones regularly.
Ok, from where did you get TPS? Do you know how its produced?
My plan was to use my present potato cultivars (14) where some are healthy enough to produce fruits and seeds. Hope for a decent cross pollination and use the seeds. Some of the cultivars may not flower before blight take them, but I am not sure about this. But there may already be better TPS out there. I will se what I get this fall, if it turns out well I could share seeds.
From this community mostly. Yes, I am producing TPS now myself from the berries. Many cultivars do not set fruit, jut those that come from TPS tend to do. Most of my potato plants have been flowering for a while now and a few of them setting fruit. I hope more will. We can share seeds of we have enough both of us at the end of the season.
There are a few entries in the European directory of seed sellers that sell tps seeds.
Here are some sources, you might need to use Google translate to navigate them though.
Vreeken Zaden: vreeken.nl
(Dutch seed seller which sometimes has tps to offer, though its usually sold out in my experience)
Magic garden seeds: Heirloom Potato Assortment (Solanum tuberosum) seeds
(Has an heirloom potato tps mix. Dont think this is in the seed seller directory)
Mother Earth seeds: Mutter Erde Saaten: Details
(I think this is TPS, but they dont explicitly say that it is seeds they are selling, so im not sure if its tubers or seeds. I made an order from them, will be interesting to see what i get.)
There’s a Dutch potato breeder that makes lots of videos on how he does that. For producing seed and crossing, he grows potatoes in a greenhouse, he doesn’t just plant the potato, but puts it on a brick in the soil. Then when the roots have established he rinses the earth of the potato to prevent it from forming bulbs and put all energy in flower and seed growth.
Here are two videos of him doing some of that at different stages: https://youtu.be/R-aJsiC8zqI (binding up plants, reducing suckers and rinsing potato) and https://youtu.be/jg4vTRFvH2w (harvesting berries and you can see the bricks under the potatoes).
So cool @Han , lots of material to learn from there! Does he talk about the plant physiology behind fruit setting more in depth in any of his videos, do you know?
I don’t really know. He posts a lot of videos of all steps of the process and I’ve watched only a few. But I get the sense he talks more about the practical aspect and is less science orientated. He also does selection for commercial production, so I’m less interested in his videos on that selection process, though there might be gems of thinking about selecting for phytophtera resistance.
So I don’t think there’s a whole lot more than: preventing the plant from forming tubers, means more resources to above ground growth and more flowers and fruits.
