Every year in the first full week of November, the European potato breeding and seed trading companies operating in the Netherlands present their new varieties and latest breeding results to their global customer base.

Many of these new varieties are intended to be used some day for the production of French Fries. All participants at what we here at PotatoPro call the 'Potato Variety Presentations in the Netherlands' (of doodgewoon rassenpresentaties in het Nederlands) have one or more contenders in this segment.

This raises the question:

“Is there room for all those new French-fry varieties?”

That is the question Aardappelwereld (World Potato Magazine) asked the participating companies last year. And thanks to our brand new partnership agreement with them, we can report you the answers they got in this series of articles!

Schaap Holland BV, Biddinghuizen

Dirk Stellingwerf, Schaap-Holland BV, Biddinghuizen:

“There’s always room for new French-fry varieties, as long as it’s a 2.0 or 3.0 version of existing ones.”

“The demand for this is growing especially now, if only because of the enormous expansion of processing capacity in a country like Belgium.”

“What we at Schaap-Holland are good at when it comes to varieties for the large French-fry factories is the early segment.”

“We already have a successful variety for that in our programme, the Amora. In Belgium, this accounts for 40 percent of the area of early French fries.”

“And there’s currently a demand for even more seed potatoes. Since its introduction, we’ve grown 10 to 15 percent in acreage each year.”

Dirk Stellingwerf:

“Is this as far as we go? No. Even an Amora doesn’t last for ever. In the long term, we’ll need an Amora plus.”

“As you know, we have our own processing place here in Biddinghuizen and we use it for cutting French fries, including the Agria variety. For many years, we’ve been looking for a replacement, preferably, of course, from our own breeding programme.”

“The replacement must be at least as good in terms of yield, colour and taste and better in terms of storage and blue discolouration, for example.”

“At the moment, we still have the young Valentina variety that seems to have all these plus characteristics. We now have some 10 hectares of seed of that variety. We’re waiting for the judgment of our colleagues who do the processing.”

“At the moment, we’re testing this variety not only for our own purposes, but also for others. And that’s how the variety has come to the attention of customers far away. This also creates opportunities for the export market and before you know it, we’ve a dual-purpose variety in our hands.”

“So in summary, breeding new French-fry varieties pays off, there's always room for better.”