I have been growing potatoes from true potato seed for a while now. I grow a few diploid potatoes, some tetraploids, and I have a wild relative of the modern potato. When grown from true seed, each and every plant is genetically unique.
Most diploid potatoes have really low yields, and produce small potatoes, but the taste of diploids is vastly superior to any variety of potato that you will have ever eaten. Modern domestic potatoes are big and bland, even the tastiest modern potato is nothing compared to a diploid.
I have been messing around with breeding diploid potatoes. I mostly grow as many as I have space to grow, cull everything substandard, each winter everything with low/no dormancy die, and I allow them to open pollinate before collecting true potato seed to plant.
Some years one variety will do better, other years another variety will do better. I am starting to get some really nice seed grown potatoes.
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| Amiah diploid potato compared to a modern tetraploid potato |
One of my seed grown potatoes is yielding quite well for a diploid, and produces two crops per year in my garden. It looks pretty similar to another high yielding diploid called 'toffee apple' which was bred by Garden Larder. As I originally got some true potato seed from Garden Larder my variety (named Amiah) may be closely related.
Interestingly someone recently sent me a few tubers of Toffee Apple Potato, it is yet to produce a crop for me because I planted it a bit late. It carries good genes and is flowering well so I assume some of the true potato seeds I am currently harvesting will carry some of its genetics.
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| Amiah potato compared to pumpkin |
Amiah diploid potato produces gorgeous looking potatoes, with rich yellow flesh, it yields surprisingly well and produces multiple crops per year, it flowers well and can produce berries and true potato seed if pollinated by a different clone.
The only real down sides to this diploid are its low dormancy and its relatively long stolons. Most of its tubers are produced under the plant but a few will spread out and be found further from the plant. To get the most out of it this plant likes a little space to run!
Compared to a modern potato, Amiah potatoes taste incredible when baked. I am bad at describing taste, all I can say is this is how a potato should taste. If I had my way I would never eat a modern domestic potato again.
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| I love rich yellow flesh potatoes |
We roasted this diploid potato along with some modern potatoes for comparison. The diploid looked like it was already buttered, much the same colour as pumpkin, indicating it is very high in beta carotene vitamin.
I really like the look of yellow flesh potatoes. That being said I also grow some blue flesh potatoes and some whites that are worth keeping. Hopefully a nice red flesh potato pops up soon.
When grown from rather diverse and heterozygous seed it is difficult to know what they will produce!
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| Amiah potatoes and the white modern tetraploid ready for roasting |
Diploid potatoes can sometimes produce small tubers. Small potatoes are frustrating to clean and difficult to use. Normally the diploids aren't too tiny, but at the start I had a couple of lines that produced pea sized tubers, needless to say I culled them from my breeding efforts pretty quickly.
Any potato grown from true seed can produce tubers with deep eyes. These are difficult to clean. Some can produce really long stolons. I have heard that some produce tubers on stolons that can be 6 foot long, making them unrealistic to grow. Luckily I have never come across anything like that.
This diploid potato produces reasonable sized tubers, nothing huge but certainly a size that is usable in the kitchen. The eyes are not very deep. The stolons are a bit longer than most varieties, but not too bad.
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| Amiah potatoes are a reasonable size for a diploid potato |
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| Amiah potatoes look nice |
I have a few extra tubers, if you are interested I should list them for sale on my for sale page along with the other perennial vegetables and things I have for sale.
Are you a member of the Alan Bishop Homegrown goodness or OSSI Open Source Seed Initiative plant breeding forums by chance? There are a lot of enthusiasts for TPS over there. I myself am finally going to plant some TPS this year. Thank you for sharing your diploid TPS success story!
ReplyDeleteHi Keen101,
DeleteI am not a member of those forums. I am self taught so probably should join and learn some things!
I like yellow flesh potatoes, they often have a really nice taste.
The 'toffee apple' potatoes did not set seed for me. I planted them too late so they did not flower at the same time as other diploids. I haven't had a chance to eat one yet, and haven't even cut one open to see the flesh colour. They should flower next spring with the rest of my diploids and enter the genetic pool then.
Where are you located? Finding true potato seed is difficult in Australia, luckily a few people are willing to share it or to share tubers of varieties that will produce true seed.
I dug my first Amiah “harvest” and you are right, Damien, low yielding and relatively small, and we had a couple tonight. They are indeed vastly superior in taste to other spuds, very tasty, delicious. Not eating any more, saving them all for planting. I have some chitting, and they are much slower than other spuds. I’m a total convert, so glad you developed them. Thanks
ReplyDeleteHi Warren,
DeleteI am glad you like the Amiah potatoes.
I really like the taste of diploid potatoes, I think they are far superior to ttraploids. I am particularly fond of Amiah potatoes, but I am very biased. Cook diploid potatoes with some other potatoes for comparison, it is a bit of an eye opener.
In general polyploidy makes plants larger and higher yielding, but I have a feeling that it also tends to make them bland. Or perhaps it is just a coincidence and all the examples I can think of were bred with the focus on large yields and long storage times.
Hi Damien,
DeleteYes, I compared them with commercial varieties like pink fir apple and nadine. Pink fir has more flavour than most others I have eaten, but Amiah is definitely the one to grow simply for its taste, it leaves the others for dead, a truly tasty vegetable, not just a potato. Looking forward to my next crop, planting within the next few weeks. Looking forward to the others you supplied too of course, the mixed diploids etc. My mixed diploids are chitting nicely, but my saved Amiah are very slow to chit, do you think I should delay planting until it warms up? For reference I am in NW Sydney
Hi Warren,
DeleteTo be honest, I have no idea if you should wait before planting them. Maybe plant some now and save some to plant later?
I used to lift all my potatoes, carefully store them, and chit them before planting. I don't do that anymore.
Once I started growing potatoes from true potato seed I had a few lines with no dormancy and a climate with 100 frosts on average per year. The easiest way for me to cull them was to dig/eat what I wanted and leave the little ones in the soil. It only took 1 or 2 winters before my remaining ones all had winter dormancy, anything that was too fragile died off in the frosts.
While certainly not the best way to grow potatoes, it quickly selects the ones that can survive in my climate with little attention. Once I had survivor genetics I could then select for size, yield, colour etc.
Hi Damien,
Deleteokay, good feedback, thanks. I might do as you say and plant some Amiah and hold some back for a while. As you do, I left some tiny Amiahs in the ground, they haven’t emerged yet,but other chitted varieties, eg Nadine, Pink Fir Apple are just starting to emerge, and it’s early days, so I will be patient
Cheers, Warren.
It's so interesting how these visually look closer to tubers like oca, ulluku, mashua!
ReplyDelete