Belarus is a traditional Land of potatoes

[Andrey_BY]

It was like that in Soviet Union times and still most of post-Soviet people knows my country because of our love to potatoes. We have special Potato breeding institute here and some many local potato varieties, but unfortunately I can send abroad only seeds and it's very hard to wait for them here when everytime we are trying to dig every potato bush before deseases will infect all the yeild.

Our national food from potatoes (with meat) - draniki

[landarc]

So, a quick search returned that these are potato pancakes stuffed with meat or mushrooms. True? I would imagine that these are fantastic.

What is the potato used in Belarus to make these?

[Andrey_BY]

Yes, these are potato pancakes stuffed mostly with meat and even without any stuffing. Much less with mushrooms. Very delicious :wink:

We prefer local Belarusian adapted potato varieties or Dutch which used to be more productive.

[Tom Wagner]

Andrey,

What do you know of these local potato varieties, all fairly recent Belarus potato varieties?

Belarus-bred potato varieties
(Loshisky) 1962 OLEV x KORENEVSK -
(Aksamit)-- 1994 DOBRO x 77540-57
(Altair)-- 1996 DOBRO x 77540-57
(Yavar) - 1994 GRANOLA x SELENA

BTW Loshisky has a t in the spelling but when I try to post this message on a preview it is muted a bit to spicy meatball, hah-hah.

Tom Wagner

[carolyn137]

BTW Loshisky has a t in the spelling but when I try to post this message on a preview it is muted a bit to spicy meatball, hah-hah.

Ja, that happened to me as well and when I looked at what I'd written ad saw spicy meatball instead I just cracked up laughing.

I was describing my tomato patch for this year and described it as shi**ee, to get around the conventional spelling, so lets see what the software does with my new spelling.

[Andrey_BY]

Tom, I know most of these varieties, but they are not so popular these days. All of them were bred by our Potato Research Institute. I just wonder where you and Carolyn usually get all these special linformation about our vegetable varieties (year of developing, what varieties had been taken for a cross etc.) :wink:

Lo★★★★sky - mid-late, mid-tall plants, with purple-blue flowers. Elongated tubers have creamy white skin and weight about 90-100 g. Good keeper. Good desease tolerance. Universal usage. Quite old potato variety.

Aksamit (or Axamit) - midseason, compact, but wide plant, with white flowers. Round tubers have creamy skin and weight about 100-150 g. Great taste and good keeper. Good overal tolerance to most of deseases, but not so resistent to the late blight.

Yavar - mid-early, compact, but wide plant, with purple-red flowers. Big oval-round tubers. Creamy skin and flesh. Very good productivity, taste and desease tolerance (except late blight). Good keeper.

Altair - midseason. Less known for me and popular.

Here are some other Belarusian potato varieties most popular now in CIS:

Lasunok, Skarb, Lazurit, Raya, Delfin. From foreign varieties I can recommend Sante (from Holland) and Adretta (from Germany). Most of them are usually early or mid-early 'cause we have rather short growing season and a lot of deseases of Solancee. Raya has very beautiful and tasty red tubers.

[landarc]

How big are potatoes in Belarus? 15 potatoes for 5 people seems, up front, like a lot of taters, no?

[Andrey_BY]

Tom, I will try to do my best to grab some seeds for you here at our Potato Research Institute. I know some people in the local Vegetable Institute and they are very close :wink: What would you like most?

[Tom Wagner]

Tom, I will try to do my best to grab some seeds for you here at our Potato Research Institute. I know some people in the local Vegetable Institute and they are very close Wink What would you like most?

Andrey,

If you will visit my post about Foreign Varieties, you will see that I have only a few that you know well. I am always looking for new varieties to breed with, and potato clones are difficult to request without extreme measures such licensing, import restrictions, material transfer agreements and the like.

Any true seed or in vitro plants that I import from overseas may have to undergo quarantine and testing for viruses before it can be sent on to me. The USDA, APHIS Plant Germplasm Quarantine Program does the quarantine and testing in Beltsville, MD. They run tests between September and May of each year. They have a limited number of potatoes that they can test each year, so it is important to get any requests for foreign material to them yearly. They usually do about 50-75 introductions per year. The USDA assigns slots in the program on a first-come, first served basis. An introduction is one clone or one lot of seeds. Only healthy introductions are released and shipped to the requesting US party. The quarantine and testing period is usually 6-9 months.

If I decide to import the material from Belarus, I may have to get a copy of the MTA from Belarus. The USDA will send the import permit directly to Belarus and they will then ship the potato cultures and/or seeds directly to them. Potatoes that test negative for pathogens will then be shipped to me from that program. They will send me 3-5 cultures of each in vitro potato or the seeds that remain in the seed lot after 20-25 are removed to testing.

The quarantine unit is not involved in the transfer of money from me to Belarus. The UDSA Aphis Plant Germplasm Quarantine Program testing program does not charge a fee since the tests are mandated by federal law. They operate at the tax payers' expense.



Please feel free to contact

Plant Pathologist
USDA, APHIS, PGQP
Bldg. 580 Powder Mill Road
BARC-East
Beltsville, MD 20705



Since not all varieties will set seed (berries), what I am looking for is probably a moot point. Anything that sets seed is desired. Ask your Potato Research Institute what they might have available.

Andrey, I wish to apologize about not listing Belarus in the most important potato producing countries. It seems so much of the SU ( Soviet Union) info on potatoes over-shadows the information I seek about Belarus. I am trying to reconstruct on this post what I think might be in your country. You have already been quite generous in listing some already.



Belorussky 3

Belorussky Krachmalisty

Belorussky Ranny

Dobro

Jasien (Jason)

Komsomolets 20

Lasunok

Loshisky (LOSCHISTSKIJ, I have)

Losickij

Naroc

Ogonek (I have)

Olev

Prigozgy 2

Razvaristy

Temp (I have)

Verba

Zora

PEDIGREE INFO:

BELORUSSKY 3 SU 1989 JASEN x 1-67.17/6 N+B


BELORUSSKY KRACHMALISTY SU 1970 1834-20 x 1724-34



BELORUSSKY RANNY SU 1969 EPICURE x PRIEKULSKY RANNY


DOBRO SU 1987 70074-17 x 69423-83


LASUNOK SU 1988 KOMSOMOLEC 20 x 71019-7


NAROC SU 1986 1036-057 x 955-075


OGONEK SU 1969 AQUILA x 9170


OLEV SU 1956 VIRULANE x MPI 40.663/21

PRIGOZGY 2 N SU 1981 737-8 x MINSKY RANNY

RAZVARISTY SU 1966 OLEV x OKTIABRENOK

TEMP SU 1965 OLEV x ORA

VERBA SU 1981 ERDKRAFT x 2497-9

Lasunok, Skarb, Lazurit, Raya, Delfin. From foreign varieties I can recommend Sante (from Holland) and Adretta (from Germany). Most of them are usually early or mid-early 'cause we have rather short growing season and a lot of deseases of Solancee. Raya

PEDIGREE INFO:



SKARB BLR 1997 315-17 x 1-78.28/10 N

LAZURIT BLR 1997 77559-65 x 2X-76-9N

DELFIN POL 1946 177/38 x STARKERAGIS

SANTE HOL 1983 Y 66-13-636 x AM 66-42 (I have)

ADRETTA DDR 1975 LU. 59.884/3 x AXILIA

Tom Wagner
Redmond, Washington

[Andrey_BY]

Tom, this is a very useful information, but there is one special thing - there is a direct prohibition to send any seeds or plants from Belarus to USA (even with certification). That's what I've been told at our main post office. Only organizations have a chance to send such items to USA with the confirmed permit from USDA and all needed certification.

But I can send all like I always did before - in regular envelopes. Unfortunately this is the only way after 9/11.

[Earl]

It's very enlightening to read all of your posts, even thought I don't understand some of what you write; to know that pioneer/scientists are seeking to improve the taste/production of our beloved potato is indeed heartening. Thanks for all your hard work, and may you beyond your wildest expections titillate our taste buds in the days to come.

[Tom Wagner]

Only organizations have a chance to send such items to USA with the confirmed permit from USDA and all needed certification.

Andrey,

I will be in contact with the Plant Inroduction Station in Wisconsin and the APHIS Plant Germplasm Quarantine Program about which Belrus potato varieties could be requested. This may take years, however, to actually get a plantlet of any of your newer potatoes.

Meanwhile in my limited research of potatoes from Belarus, I am impressed with the variety "TEMP". I planted less than 2 oz. of this clone but it yielded over 35 lbs.!

In my field test, Temp tubers were quite flat and round. The description I have read about it didn't say anything about being so flat. It was late as they said and high yielding. The cooking quality was good, very high in soliids, which is not surprising for potatoes from your area of the world. I wonder why is is grown on so many acres there. In the former S. Union area under potato cultivationm the "Temp" was on 400,000 ha. A hectare is a unit of area equal to 2.471 acres.

Potatoes in my area have to have better appearance than what Temp has to be accepted by mass marketing. I may put in out with organic growers next year to assess their impressions.

When I ate a sample of the Temp variety I was thinking.. Cobbler or Russet Burbank in its texture. I thought that Temp was like a white version of Early Rose. If you follow pedigree info like I do, you will read that Cobblers and Burbanks are derived from Early Rose. Sure enough, when I did a pedigree search on Temp, it derived from Early Rose on a direct maternal descent.


TEMP from OLEV from VIRULANE from GOLDEN WONDER from a MAINCROP mutant from an EARLY ROSE seedling. This explains why it doesn't set its own berries and the pollen fertility must be poor. I did use Temp as a female in crosses this year.

Tom Wagner