If it has been a long time since high school biology and you are rusty on the concept of cytoplasm, you can be forgiven. It’s not something that most of us think about very often, but it is important to potato breeding, so let’s review. Cytoplasm is everything that is inside a cell but outside […]
Overview Potato plants sometimes flower and then form berries. Potato berries form only in favorable weather and with sufficient pollination. Potato berries contain seeds that you can grow. The berries are toxic and should not be eaten. There is not usually any reason to remove the berries from the plant. Seeds from berries that fall […]
A Summary of Potato Color Genetics Introduction Genes Controlling Color Pigments Purple and Red Yellow and Orange Color Distribution Flower Color Foliage Color Russeting Known Genotypes Introduction For many crops, you don’t have to search very far to find a nice summary chart of the major genes involved in economically important […]
This page is out of date, although I still find it useful for looking up synonyms and abbreviations. For more detailed information about wild potato species, see our wild potato guide. This is one of those posts that is as much for my reference as anyone else’s. Surprisingly, it is hard to find a simple […]
Introduction How Seeds are Formed Domesticated and Wild Potatoes Ploidy Monoploid and Haploid Numbers Haploids Interactions of Ploidy in Crosses Unreduced (2n) Gametes Endosperm Ratio Endosperm Balance Number The Potato Gene Pool Triploid Domesticated Potatoes The Genetics of EBN Manipulating Ploidy A Final Note on Probability Determining Ploidy Morphological Evalutation Guard Cell Counts Chromosome Counts […]
Because we sell excess seed from my potato breeding projects, we get a lot of questions about what my goals are. Those goals are sometimes hard to articulate because I haven’t thought through them as clearly as I have done for the other plants that I work with. My work with potatoes goes back before […]
We sold out of true potato seeds very quickly this year. Normally, people buy one packet and that is usually done along with a larger order. This year, over a period of a few weeks, we had a lot of orders for nothing but potato seed and in quantities of 4 packets or more. That’s […]
This was a pretty normal year on the coast of Washington. We had a cool winter, a cool spring, a cool summer, and so far, we’re having a cool fall. We’re close enough to the ocean that the temperature of the Pacific just off shore is a much better predictor of our temperatures than anything […]
I have been swapping potato seed with other growers for a while now and there is always a hunger for pictures and information about the seeds that I offer. I’m trying to get a little better at documenting the new varieties as they come out of the ground. Maybe this blog will help me to […]
Introduction This is the procedure that I use to extract potato seeds. It is not necessarily the procedure that you would want to use. This procedure is suitable for extracting large amounts of seed while maximizing germination and minimizing potential for disease transmission. I extract seed from as much as 400 quarts of berries in […]