Sometimes it is a burden to be by your self in a discipline that is largely ignored by professionals who are working at research stations and have their own established protocol. It is even more of a burden to be misunderstood by a populace who fancy themselves as experts in things tomatoes, but are baffled when it comes to growing potatoes from true seed.
Pathologists in potatoes might as well hate me. They feel anyone growing potatoes without the ingrained demand that all potatoes be planted with certified seed (tubers). Anything that smacks them as being amateurish, such as saving tubers from year to year is tantamount to being the reincarnation of “Typhoid Mary!” These so-called experts feel unhinged pleasure in making sure that I am “isolated” from the potato industry. These same experts are the ones that claim a disease may have spread from a grower like myself into the commercial fields. The sense of disambiguation on the experts’ part means I have to try harder just to make sure I am not the problem; but the solution.
I grow certified seed potatoes and the potatoes pass inspection. I breed potatoes from potatoes that I have brought in as seed potatoes, meristem plantlets, 1st year seedling tuber families, tiny tubers from quarantined plantlets, true seed from other organizations, from my own crosses, from multi-year crosses of seed-to-seed lines; therefore, I take great pains not to bring in something that is obviously infected with pathogens. There are a few lines that I have kept going for a number of years, and in those clones I rigorously rouge out infected plants and tubers.
So why am I such a stickler on effective potato berry extraction of true seed (TPS)? It is my way of demonstrating the obvious pains of keeping disease out of my potato lines. Since I have been a grower, a potato buyer for Frito-Lay during the late 60’s and early 70’s, a potato warehouse manager, a fieldsman, a variety coordinator with growers, potato trials consultant, variety cooperator with the USDA and many Universities, a breeder, a seedsman--you get the point? It is almost like I have been there, done that in all thing potatoes! This does not count all the jobs I have had in the tomato world.
Seed treatment of potato seed is close to my heart and to my scientific bent. But I treat the practice of growing potatoes as an art that was honed by 55 years of doing so many things related to the plant. Growing true seed that is nearly clear of any disease is acceptable to the general ag world, but I prefer to grow as a quarantine officer would operate. My abhorrence of fermenting seed only in potatoes comes from all of the experiences I have just mentioned. It just is not effective enough for me to secure clean potatoes from TPS. My experience in potatoes greatly affects my concept of tomato seed extraction. That people rely on fermentation to rid pathogens in tomato seed extraction, frankly, scares the …. Out of me!!! So forgive me if I think in a rather negative way if folks don’t do the potato seed extraction correctly in my opinion deriving from my experience.
Later, I will expound on the literature's support for my methods of seed extraction and why.
Tom Wagner
|