Potato berries and TPS (true potato seed)
 

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Been too busy extracting seed from potato berries and harvesting tubers to post lately, but here goes:

Pictured in a variety of potato that I bred up (Nordic October) and am certifying the variety for replanting as nuclear certified seed potatoes.

Note the berries and true seed. There is enough seed here to plant an acre of transplants. Nearly 100% of the progeny will be red unless the neighboring variety (Lumpers) was able to transfer pollen by insects, etc.

Nordic October;s pedigree includes Red October, Fontenot, NorDonna, and ND2912-2R. I could list dozens of other parental lines but their contribution is much further back in the family tree.:dizzy:

Tom Wagner

Hi Tom,
Do you need to ferment the True Potato Seed?
Jeff

[quote] Do you need to ferment the True Potato Seed?
Jeff[/quote]Only if I don't get around to the berries while they are still fresh and somewhat firm.

I collect so many potato berries that, yes, some of them ferment or rot down before I get to them.:panic:

Fermentation is Mature's way of breaking down the gel surrounding the seed. I prefer to break down the gel with T.S.P., or Trisodium Phosphate. TSP is acleaning agent, stain remover and degreaser, commonly used to prepare surfaces for painting.


TSP is a highly basic compound and dissolves the gel quickly when the seed is dumped from a strainer into a small body of water with about 3% of TSP for a few minutes. Using gloves, a quick rub of the chemical on the seed within a strainer works magic cleaning the seed in preparation for a chlorine rince. Nature just doesn't clean like TSP.

When I get time, I will post some step by step methods of berry collecting, curing times, crushing the berries with a blender, floating off the pulp, separation of seed from the water, TSP and Chlorine treatments, and drying. If you wish, I could include some digital photos, too.

Tom Wagner

Hi Tom,
Thanks so much for your answer. If you have the time I would love to see the complete process in digital pictures.
How does one go about planting TPS? Direct seed in the garden or would transplants work?
Jeff

For some reason, direct seeding in the field never worked well for me. The potato seed is small and must be covered lightly and the wind will dry out the seedling bed too much. If one had almost daily or twice daily sprinkling of water, you may succeed.

I prefer the greenhouse method of seeding, transplanting once in the greenhouse to bury the cotyledons and first true leaves or so. Then the transplanting the field with further burying of the leaves. By several hilling ups, the original root zone is several inches below the surface as it would be with tuber planted potatoes. Obviously direct seeding has problematic disadvantages; seedlings too short and stocky for hilling up, weeding difficulties, too cool, or too hot of soil.

If I get time to fill in the detail, I will expand on this in my web site, still a work of progress.

Tom

Looking forward to the detailed "from TPS to Harvest" thread by Tom. :) He told me some about it and I found some info on various website dating back 20 years.

This is so interesting! :D

I found three berries in my little Yukon Gold patch. Now I know what to do with them. Kind of. :dizzy:

If you grow out the transplants, starting them indoors early like you would tomato seeds, can you get decent sized eating potatoes by fall, or would they only have time to grow to the size of small seed potatoes for planting the following year?


Dee

[quote]detailed "from TPS to Harvest" thread by Tom[/quote]I need to do a bang up job on this, limiting my proFUNities to a minimum. I'll have to edit this with some re-writes for clarity.


.[quote]..found three berries in my little Yukon Gold patch. Now I know what to do with them. Kind of.

If you grow out the transplants, starting them indoors early like you would tomato seeds, can you get decent sized eating potatoes by fall, or would they only have time to grow to the size of small seed potatoes for planting the following year?
[/quote]

Either way.. I prefer to start my potato seed 4 to 6 weeks prior to field transplanting after all danger of frost has passed. That way you have a good chance of having full sized tubers. Sowing potato seed between Aug 10 and Oct 15, is a good way to grow slightly stunted potato plants that will produce tiny tubers from the size of peas to walnuts.

Tom

Thanks, Tom! I think I'll wait until spring. Gets too cold up here to keep anything in the ground very late in the fall. Looking forward to trying the seeds , should be fun to see what I get. :yes:


Dee

Note that Yukon Gold is a [URL="http://www.umaine.edu/paa/Varieties/yukongold.htm"]hybrid[/URL], and since potatoes are [COLOR=Silver]diploid[/COLOR], you can get unbelievable variations in subsequent generations. This is why getting good TPS is so hard. It takes years of selections and crossing to get viable TPS of varieties worth growing year-to-year. Stable, good TPS is the holy grail and it's been tried with mixed success in S.E. Asia.

[quote]Note that Yukon Gold is a [URL="http://www.umaine.edu/paa/Varieties/yukongold.htm"]hybrid[/URL], and since potatoes are diploid, you can get unbelievable variations in subsequent generations.[/quote]Morgan, most commercial varieties are hybrids, but Yukon Gold and most other commercial varieties are [SIZE=5][B][I]tetraploid,[/I][/B][/SIZE] not diploid as you stated. Tetraploids are like two plants in one, and the variability in the selfed and/or hybridized seed is even more unbelievable.Diploids have 24 chromosomes, tetraploids have 48!

[quote]
This is why getting good TPS is so hard. It takes years of selections and crossing to get viable TPS of varieties worth growing year-to-year.[/quote]It is not as difficult as you may have read. If you want perfect potatoes, and super high yields, and high specific gravities, and a certain type of skin, and a specific pathogen resistance, and on and on....then the odds are against you. But if you are tolerant of a wider diversity of potatoes that don't have to fit a preconceived idea of commercial acceptance, then you have most of the BELL CURVE of OK potatoes. It's the template upon template upon template that eliminates some otherwise fine potatoes.

[quote]Stable, good TPS is the holy grail and it's been tried with mixed success in S.E. Asia.[/quote]If you mean (stable, good TPS) that produces a very narrow type of potato where each seedling has to be a dead ringer for a Russet Burbank, then you may be right. But accepting a variety of russetting, with round, oval, oblong, and longs in the mix, then you may be much more obliging.

Most TPS seed for sale is either OP or hybrid lines that will throw 100% white skinned potatoes. There will be some yield differences, but the tubers can be marketed as a group.

TPS is a great way to get new varieties of disease free potatoes. If the first generation of tubers from a mixed sibling base is screened for type, saving only the 1%, 10%, 25%, or more of the bulk harvest, the selected prototypes can be replanted for a one time harvest. This way is best if you want every tuber to be yellow fleshed, or red skinned, or fingerling shaped, etc., with a wide diversity of traits in other ways not so visible.


With my fifty some years of selecting potatoes from true seed, I have some quite stable genetics within parental lines. I've made berry setting a priority, so that multigeneration progenies later, I have lines in all colors and classes that make for good potential hybrids.
My information and clonal potatoes are mostly in house, so you may not be able to google TPS and see my results. The industry in the USA is against TPS simply because they want a Katahdin, a Cascade, a Red LaSoda, a Yukon Gold, a Ranger Russet, a Banana Fingerling, a Caribe, and if it is not exactly that...they don't want it, and they think the market place won't want it either.

I am looking forward to the day when people will respect diversity rather than scorn it.

Tom Wagner

Well, this gets more and more interesting by the minute! :))

I am very much looking forward to what else I may get besides the gold potatoes -- had no idea of the potential for such huge variability!

Since it's all a new experience for me, I feel lucky that I noticed those little green berries. The first one I saw I thought was a tiny green tomato that had fallen off an adjacent plant. Then I realized there were no tomato plants within easy dropping distance of the potato bed.

What is the shelf life of TPS in average storage conditions? Less than tomato seeds?


Dee

I would love to get into TPS. It would mean no more exorbitant shipping and storage of tubers. I've got a request in. :)

[quote]Well, this gets more and more interesting by the minute!
[/quote]Can you imagine the interesting by the minute scenario multiplied by years for me!

[quote]I am very much looking forward to what else I may get besides the gold potatoes -- had no idea of the potential for such huge variability![/quote]I have been testing Yukon Gold OP berries for 25 years or more ever since the experimental clone was first accessed by me. In controlled self pollinated berries, as opposed to OP berries, I get a rather predictable segregation of types each time I grow out seedlings. If you grow out seedlings yourself enjoy the following:
[LIST][*]whites with white flesh[*]whites with light yellow flesh[*]yellows with light yellow flesh[*]yellows with medium yellow flesh[*]yellows with deeper yellow flesh[*]repeat of above but with either light pink eyes/red eye[*]all of the above with templates of size, yield, shape, flavor, etc., differences.[/LIST][B][COLOR=black]Yukon[/COLOR][/B] [B][COLOR=black]Gold[/COLOR][/B] was selected from a cross between Norgleam (female) andW5279-4 (a yellow-fleshed diploid hybrid of [I]Solanum phureja[/I] and haploid cv [B][COLOR=black]Katahdin[/COLOR][/B]). Yukon Gold is a tetraploid because of the unreduced gamete from it pollen parent.


It was tested under the pedigree G6666-4Y.

The male was a USW 1(Katahdin) x PI 195198.13 (phu) hybrid. The plant introduction was from Columbia but the line used in the breeding was seedling #13, note the .13 behind the accession number. This seedling had pink/red eyes and deep yellow flesh.

[B]PI 195198 [/B]

[URL="http://www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/html/taxon.pl?318004"]Solanum phureja subsp. phureja[/URL] SOLANACEAE Donor identifier: CPC 979. England 1951
Collected in: Narino, Colombia

The Solanum phureja varieties,have distinct taste benefits, very full flavor and unusual textural qualities.

For cool photos of potatoes from Colombia check this out:
[URL]http://bp2.blogger.com/_VOyodbGaDqc/RruHl42CBjI/AAAAAAAADUI/uYibk5WRO_8/s1600-h/mercado+pasto+colombia.jpg[/URL]

Norgleam was a selfed (OP) of its parents: ND 457-1 x ND 457-1 1957



ND457-1 from North Dakota is a cross between SEBAGO x MINN. 92.36-5

Sebago is a cross of sibs: (CHIPPEWA x KATAHDIN)

Looking back at all the Katahdins in Yukon Gold, I determined that it is 5/8 Katahdin.

Its maternal grandparents are one and the same and ¾ Katahdin and its paternal grandmother is a dihaploid of Katahdin, so that makes that grandparent 100% Katahdin. Only the paternal grandfather is not related. The [B]coefficient[/B] of [B]inbreeding[/B] data is significant.

Nine steps of inbreeding Katahdin clones went into the Yukon Gold. Note the pedigree here:



[URL]http://potatodbase.dpw.wau.nl/pedigree_imagemap.php?id=7222[/URL]

Tom Wagner BTW has several generations of inbred Yukon Golds and hybrids to many other gold fleshed types.

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This is part of my morning's work in extracting seed from potato berries. It shows how the berries are starting to really ripen and proceeding to break down, perfect conditioning for seed quality.


This is a variety I call AWOL DUDE. Strange name, I know, but the origin of the line goes back to phureja lines but the grandmother of this line went A.W.O.L. and crossed with a tetraploid. So I called the best seedling of that generation Awol. When I grew out seedlings of yet another tetraploid father, I found this one hill of potatoes with the most beautiful red skin and deep yellow/orange flesh, and exclaimed, "Whoa, Dude!" So the name of the mother (Awol) and the father (Some Dude, I don't know) became the name for this clone. The flavor makes be go, whoa, dude yet.

The pictures shows about 800 berries which will produce about 80,000 to 150,000 seeds. Twenty plants made these berries. Going to the blender now. Be back later.

Tom Wagner