Quote:
Originally Posted by philc
Mr Romans is a little disparaging about non-Scottish seed quoting trade bodies in Scotland - hardly unbiased opinion! I'm sure very reputable suppliers of seed potatoes such as Tuckers would disagree with the gentleman - if you want a good choice of salad potatoes then the majority of varieties are grown on the continent.
He is right in saying that the Ministry only tests samples of the imports. As its tests are destructive, 100% testing would be a little counter productive - the standard quantity tested is 200 tubers from each shipment, which is typically a small number of 25Kg bags ie a high proportion if my memory of statistics serves me correctly.
btw The most recent outbreak of brown rot in the UK came from UK produced seed.
If the original question was about how do you create new seed (ie a new variety) it involves cross polination, the sowing of the resulting seed (typically 4,000) and then a 7 year selection process followed by 2 - 3 years bulking up the variety to have enough to market.
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I just came across this thread and thought I would add my input.
Alan Romans is correct as Scottish seed is regarded as the best in the world.
Tuckers buy Scottish seed from me and other Scottish suppliers.
The testing policy of DEFRA is a waste of time.
Brown rot could only have been imported into this country to infect the UK produced seed.
To produce a new variety would take 12 years and £50000 in costs.
To sum things up I would recommend people in the Uk buy UK only seed so that we can keep all of the nasty diseases out. Please do not plant any super market bought potatoes.