|
The Yukon Gem potato developed by ARS. Photo
courtesy of the Potato Variety Management Institute.
|
|
|
Golden Success for Yukon Gem Yellow-fleshed
Potato
By Marcia
Wood June 11, 2009
Easy to prepare, nourishing, and reliably satisfying, potatoes have a
lot to offer. But a potato called "Yukon Gem" has a little something extra: a
pleasing, light-yellow flesh that adds eye appeal to this tasty tuber.
Smooth-skinned and medium-sized, Yukon Gem potatoes can be baked,
roasted, boiled, or processed into golden chips or fries. That's according to
geneticist
Richard
G. Novy and plant pathologist
Jonathan
L. Whitworth, both with the Agricultural
Research Service (ARS)
Small
Grains and Potato Germplasm Research Unit in Aberdeen, Idaho.
Novy, Whitworth, and two now-retired Aberdeen researchers--Joseph J.
Pavek and Dennis L. Corsini--tested and evaluated this niche-market tuber for
more than a decade before determining, in 2006, that it was ready to offer as a
named variety to potato growers, producers of potato seed, and potato breeders
and researchers.
Last year, Yukon Gem was planted--for seed--on a total of 32 acres in
five western states. That's a respectable figure for a specialty potato still
considered a relative newcomer to the potato industry. The acreage was enough
to produce seed for plants that, in all, could yield a total of at least 41
million Yukon Gem potatoes.
Yukon Gem got its start in North Dakota as one of many unnamed,
untested offspring of Yukon Gold--a popular yellow-fleshed variety--and
Brodick, a disease-resistant potato from Scotland. In 1995, the Aberdeen
scientists selected it from among thousands of other potatoes they were
evaluating in their research fields in Idaho. They gave it the designation
NDA5507-3Y, then evaluated it in rigorous field trials over 11 years in five
states.
Colleagues from state universities in Idaho, Oregon and
Washington--participants in what's known as the
Northwest
Potato Variety Development Program--were among the collaborators in
evaluations that led to the tuber's naming and eventual release.
In the field tests, Yukon Gem's impressive yields averaged 12 percent
higher in eastern Idaho, 22 percent higher at test sites in Washington, and 41
percent higher in parts of Oregon than its Yukon Gold parent. Also, Yukon Gem
showed notable resistance to many of the microbes that cause costly diseases
such as dry rot, and both foliar and tuber late blight.
ARS is the principal intramural scientific research agency of the
U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Share/Bookmark