Id this spud please

[Medbury Gardens]

Can someone tell me the name of this potato, the leaves have a purple/green colour and tends to grow as a main cropper.The flowers is purple and goes grow seed pods.

[crazytomato]

Maybe blue salad.

[Medbury Gardens]

After spending considerable time searching the web viewing most of those blue varieties listed by Tom Wagner on a previous thread, i now know that it is NOT one of the blues.As Tom pointed out they are all genetically identical as well as in there appearance,they all seem to have that white ring just below the surface also they tend to grow elongated.I grow old blue and have for over 15 years.
I`ve have grown purple spud for only two years, it was given to me by old man who had grown it for some years but can`t remember who gave it to him or its name,seems odd to me that he would grow it for so long and not even give a name.
Purple spud is a large, mostly round, never has the white ring of the blues and has very deep eyes.As for the colour,99% of them are solid purple but the odd one can have a pure white blob that can take up half the potato,they are also so dark purple that some that grow above ground don`t even turn green.
There down side is they are not great keepers, its getting near late winter here now and i have lost a few to rot in my shed.

Richard

[Tomaat]

I (we) have seen this purple spuds, it is definitely not Salad Blue. I grew Salad blue and the colour was no match to the purple spuds. Salad blue are elongated, has white ring like what MG has described and the colour is much paler.

Any tomatovillian has idea what spud could this Purple be ?
Help !!!

[Medbury Gardens]

It was good to meet you folks,
I now belive this is a NZ bred spud, i was sent a copy of Te Whakatu Korero on Nga Riwai (Maori Potatoes),it was written by Graham Harris and Poai Pakeha Nihan, from Russell Genet a potato breeder from crop and Food, a government owned research company.He thinks its a cross between Urenika and a round white, this shows up in the odd spud having some white within while still mostly retaining the colour of the Urenika.I`m now certain that given that theres no record of this potato with Crop and food or in Te Whakatu Korero i may never find its Name or origin unless i do what Russell suggests an do a DNA test, but that takes $$,i will keep looking in the mean time, i may look to that later.

[Tom Wagner]

After doing some searches for the mystery blue potato, I've included some info for folks here at the potato forum. Even though I have developed all kinds of blue potatoes in my own breeding efforts, it is always fun to see what others are doing around the world. Tom Wagner





http://www.rnzih.org.nz/RNZIH_Journa..._Vol10_No2.pdf

The late Graham Harris. He developed an international reputation for his extensive
research on nga riwai – the Mäori potato. Read the link above.


http://www.crop.cri.nz/home/intl-yea...o/breeding.php This link is interesting…

The latest cultivar to emerge from the breeding programme is a purple potato with the experimental name of ‘Crop 33’.

History

Crop & Food Research has New Zealand’s sole commercial potato breeding programme. Eighteen cultivars have been released by Crop & Food Research since 1992 and 14 are still commercially available. They are:

Fresh:
Red Rascal, Driver, Horizon, Allura, Summer Delight Karaka, Purple Passion

French fry:
Moonlight, Kiwitea, Lone Ranger, Bondi

Crisping:
Kaimai, Fraser, Golden Promise.

Before Crop & Food Research was formed, New Zealand’s sole commercial potato breeding programme was conducted by DSIR Crop Research. A further 14 cultivars were released by DSIR Crop Research including the popular Rua and Iwa.”
Russell Genet is a Crop & Food Research potato breeder based at Lincoln. He works closely with fellow breeder John Anderson, who is based at Pukekohe.



germplasm collection
“A collection of over 500 potato lines is maintained by Crop & Food Research, primarily to preserve germplasm for future breeding programmes. The collection includes the Taewa, or Māori potatoes, other varieties no longer commercially available, and breeding lines with valuable genetic traits. About half the germplasm is stored as pathogen-free microtubers.”
Pam Fletcher is the microtuber collection’s curator. In addition she conducts research on the detection and elimination of potato diseases.

[Medbury Gardens]

If anyone would like TPS from this spud, send me a PM

[Medbury Gardens]

This is how the TPS purple potato turned out that i now call "mystery".
There were no other flowering spuds around when these were flowering,so this colour variation has to be its original crossing,i would have expected two colours but three??even the two plants that produced the whites are completely different,one round,other elongated.

[Tom Wagner]

As a potato breeder for so many years, I see patterns that repeat themselves, and other times totally unexpected things happen.

The photo in the last message is not that much different than what one would find with OP seed of All Blue, and its synonymously named blue clones. I have great respect that many countries have their own blue potatoes.

If you go to Tucker farms you will see this blurb:

All Blue, Syn. Congo, Blue Marker, Russian Blue, British Columbia Blue, McIntosh Black, River John Blue, Sharon's Blue. Also, probable synonyms: Blue Congo, Congo Blue, Purple Congo, Nova Scotia Blue, Himalayan Black. Black Russian, Davis Purple, Eureka Purple, Fenton Blue, Purple Mountain and Shaw #7.(If all this is not confusing enough, there are apparently two varieties in Europe being called Congo--the other has white flowers and is definitely not the same as Congo or All Blue.) Parentage: Unknown, but most authorities suspect All Blue originated in the US or the UK (Scotland) in the late nineteenth century.

What our friend in New Zealand has found is indicative of what I find showing up in the old blue lines of potatoes. Many of the lines listed by Tucker have segregating progenies much like the photo our sheep shearer found in his TPS seedlings. I know, I have had seedlings of at least 10 of the above listed clones. All very similar progenies.

Since our so-called modern potatoes have tetraploid makeups, the diversity within one potato is akin to having 4 parental groups manifesting its genetic structure. If a diploid has genes from 2 parents, a tetraploid is essentially showing chromosomes from 4 parents. When that overload of genes segregates, one finds a rather weird combination of a number of recessive groupings and yet another round of dominants. So round, oval and long pairs with white, red, purples, and muddy whites in an array that would show a pattern of ratios if one had enough siblings to demonstrate this. I would say if you had 100 seedlings, the probability would be fairly accurate to measure the Punnet square.

Knowing now after so many years of segregating families of Heirloom potatoes, especially those of over 150 years since their origin, that the materials available for breeding or obtaining accidental crossing between cultivars with various colors, fingerling types to oval, kidney, to round tubers. Some of the pigmented lines may have had minor traces of internal colors in ancestral lines only to show up with fairly vivid colors two or more generations down in the descendencies.

It was shown in some Peruvian studies of landrace potatoes favored for years by the indigenous people, that even the diploid lines segregated for a cornucopia of skin colors within the seedling progenies.

What is neat about this phenomena is that even with diminishing lines of varieties grown by farmers in most countries, one can intercross the domestic lines and come up with a virtual history of the potatoes that occurred locally in the years and/or centuries before.

From thence to hence. I segregate potato clones by using self pollinated potato berries, and OP berries, and hybridized berries...all in an effort to find the thence..the measure of an iconoclast who tears apart the present to find the originators of the passing ages of potatoes. But henceforth, recreating expanded diversity by crossing those ancient parts with similar ancient parts of potato germplasm of yet another country.

Like I have reported somewhere else in the potato posts; sometimes the best intensity of flesh color is accomplished not be crossing blue to blue, but by crossing white to red flesh. Their is a synergism of stacking the disparate genes to effect the highest expression of blue flesh. Thus when that clone is taken to its OP progeny, the whites, the reds, the blues show up again and again.

Tom Wagner

[Medbury Gardens]

Thanks Tom for that information,most interesting,

[Medbury Gardens]

These TPS have been growing now for 9 months.Is this common for them to grow for so long,they still look to be growing strong(even though they have just been hit with a light frost)compared the parent potato that is now starting die back

[Tom Wagner]

These TPS have been growing now for 9 months.Is this common for them to grow for so long,they still look to be growing strong(even though they have just been hit with a light frost)compared the parent potato that is now starting die back

Richard...Potatoes grown from TPS can throw you and I for a curve.

• They are very very healthy...no virus carry over

• They tend to be vegetative and the stolons may spring up as new plants.

• Potatoes grown from tubers tend to reach senescence earlier since the starch in the tubers triggers all sort of physiological factors.
• The seedlings will react differently when grown from their tubers the next season quite often.
• The age of tubers planted is measured by how "old' the tubers are by a template of temperature of storage, dormancy, conditioning, apical dominance, whole tuber versus cut tuber, etc.
• Potatoes carry more genes that affect vine or tuber set that what meets the eye. Modern breeding and selection favors early over late. Most potato breeders select in fairly short growing seasons.
• Mild climates or long seasons allow the late 'guys' to flourish
• Many seedlings almost act like they are non tuber bearing species.
• In the wild, seedling potatoes tend to favor blooming for a long time, thus creating lots of berries as that is but one function of outcrossers like potatoes.
• Competition between siblings of a family encourages the late maturing ones to crowd out early clones
• Blue potatoes seem to be closer to the wild type than other colors.
• Some seedling potatoes may actually never die down. i will have to prove this sometime. A variety that folks have requested from me that they have tried over 10 years ago and still request (♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫ Y Azul)(Black and Blue in Spanish) has to be killed otherwise it keeps growing and growing until the plants are 12 ft wide. This same variety will not set tubers if it is too dry and will wait until rains to put on a huge yield.
• Potatoes seem to revert to the wild type which is closer to the equator than most current potato production areas.
• Potatoes set tubers under a series of stresses that seedling don't experience
• Potatoes have evolved along with viruses and tend to co-exist happily with some of those virus, causing the benign injury forcing the potato to go into survival mode by producing tubers and forgetting the blooming phase almost completely.
• Most breeders grow the seedlings first in the greenhouse during the winter months and eliminate the late maturing kinds quickly. Each seedling is grown in a small pot the size of Jiffy pots. The peanut size tubers are then planted in the spring, one tuber per clone.
• I could go on and on, but you get the point

I think I must be a "Potato Whisperer" as I seem to be listening to potatoes as if they were kindred spirits.

[Medbury Gardens]

I'm so pleased i grew that TPS now,its been so interesting and i wouldn't have learnt all this if i hadn't.Thanks again Tom,

[salix]

Tom, thank you for your informative posts - I have learned so much from them!

[Medbury Gardens]

Having just dug the TPS crop has reveled that they produced the three colours off one plant but also in varying degrees, one plant mainly purple with a few red potatoes,others mainly white with the odd coloured,some an even mix of colours.

All and all its been fascinating growing TPS and look forward to growing the TPS you sent me thanks Tom.