I need recommendation on disease resistant potato varieties that can grow well in a cool wet climate. Some articles mention blight-resistant potato varieties, but I do not see them in stores. Do we have companies that sell blight-resistant potato that can be used for planting?
Look for Sarpo Mira and Sarpo Axona.
Blight resistance is a genetic arms race. It’ll work for a while, and then the blight adapts to the defense, necessitating a new gene for resistance. Growing from seed can help keep up, but the resulting plants and tubers won’t be fully consistent with the starting variety.
If not growing from seed, then switching between blight resistant varieties periodically may help. The suggested Sarpo s are a good place to start (and incidentally are seed bearing).
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we are as cold and wet as it gets and Kennebec has been the most grown potato here since its development. even does well in our rocky, clay soil. Katahdin is another and ripens a little later. of course, the farmers spray for blight so this might not be applicable to organic potatoes.
We have not had late blight problems in many years. We routinely change which garden we use for the potato patch. We grew 16 varieties of potatoes this year, including these I list. All were grown from saved seed, but we originally obtained them from Maine Potato Lady, Fedco, or the Potato Garden.
Late Blight high resistance:
Anuschka
Chieftain
Elba
Magic Molly
Papa Cacho
Strawberry Paw
Moderate resistance:
Amarosa
Desiree
German Butterball
Pinto
Rose Finn
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Late blight spreads through the environment under the right conditions, sometimes moving hundreds of miles in just a few days. Lodidian, the varieties listed as highly resistant are already known to be compromised by several strains of late blight.
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Fortunately those strains haven’t made an appearance near us, but I suppose it is just a matter of time.
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im in potato country and the last time i heard of late blight was 24 years ago. not sure what varieties were affected.
We have grown all of these here without any signs of blight
Our potato varieties
- Red Norland. More smooth and less eyes than Red Lasota
- Viking purple. More purple than red
- Red Lasoda. Not as round or smooth as Red Norland
- Red Potomac: Received with the fingerling order
- Yellow Finn
- Yukon Gold
Dennis
Kent, wa
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I’m interested in scab-resistant varieties. Yukon Gold is very scab prone here. This year I tried Ratt (thanks to Mrs G’s suggestion), a fingerling type with great taste… but beginnings of scab even on small fingerlings.
Others have scab-resistant varieties?
None of the common commercial varieties are highly resistant. That includes Red Norland, Red Pontiac, Lasoda, etc. They are NOT blight resistant. They can be grown in some locales because the variant of late blight in that area does not infect them and/or the climate is such that late blight can’t easily reproduce or the variety matures before late blight becomes a problem. Move them from Kent WA to anywhere on the east coast and they may go down with late blight. Do NOT tell anyone in a climate different to your own that a variety is “late blight resistant” without first verifying it is in fact resistant and will produce.
Potatoes respond to late blight by developing resistance genes. Look this up, R1, R2, R3, R4, etc are all named variants of R genes in potato. The problem with R genes is that they are kind of like a very insecure lock. Eventually late blight finds the right genetic key and opens the lock. Potatoes and late blight have been in an arms race for millenia as the potato develops resistance then late blight overcomes it. As a result, the potato genome is littered with a few dozen resistance genes that no longer do anything useful.
What can be done about it? Some very dedicated breeders assembled potato varieties with unusual variants of resistance. They crossed these varieties and then intercrossed the offspring until new varieties were found that have multiple resistance genes stacked into a single plant. The result is potatoes like Sarpo Mira and Sarpo Axona. There are a handful of others.
If you do a search, you can find a few suppliers who sell Sarpo Mira. I have not looked recently, but there are probably a few other resistant varieties if due diligence is done.
With all that said, some potatoes that are not resistant can still be grown in many climates. This is usually because they mature before late blight becomes a problem. Red Pontiac is an excellent example maturing large red tubers a few weeks before late blight makes the rounds. That doesn’t help much if your soil is infested with nematoes as Red Pontiac is a nematode magnet.
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i didnt even know of this place. its only 60mi. south of me and i go through that town every time i go downstate. heart of potato country.
I noticed that seed potato being sold as treated or non-treated. What option do I need to consider if want to preserve potato for future planting?