Solynta 'Hybrid Potatoes from True Seeds' Technology named Dutch National Icon

Solynta "Hybrid Potatoes fromTrue Seeds" Technology named Dutch National Icon

November 18, 2014

Source

Solynta

In the presence of HRH King Willem Alexander, the Dutch Government through Minister Kamp honored Solynta as Dutch National Icon for its breakthrough discovery ”Hybrid Potatoes from True seeds".

King Willem Alexander and Hein Kruyt CEO Solynta

“This breakthrough technique makes it possible to grow potatoes from true-seed instead of seed-tubers and makes targeted breeding possible. Valuable traits can now be utilized quickly, like disease resistance, nutritional value, and higher yields. Solynta underlines with this project the important Dutch contribution to the global food supply", says Dutch Minister of economic affairs, Henk Kamp.

Dutch National Icon

The Dutch government laureates both innovative as well as breakthrough projects which will contribute to future wealth and well-being and contributes to solving important societal problems. Through this competition the Dutch Government wants to inspire the Netherlands and showcase Dutch excellence to the world.

Solynta Technology: Hybrid potato breeding through True Potato Seeds (TPS)

During the last 60 years, a tremendous increase in yields have been accomplished in almost all agriculture and horticulture crops. This innovative push largely ignored potato, which is shown by the fact that Bintje 1905 is still the largest variety in Europe. Even though, with all its drawbacks, potato is already the 4th crop in the world (USD75B farmgate value).

Solynta’s innovation now makes it possible to unlock potato’s full potential:

Solynta's Breeding technology makes it possible to combine natural resistance existing in the Potato species so that the world might need up to 80% less fungicides and pesticides. Furthermore, the development and commercialization of new varieties will be much faster, in 2-3 years as compared to more than 12 years.

Targeted breeding, hybrid vigor and excellent starting material can realize yield increases over 30+% in the developed world and possibly over 100+% in the developing world. Furthermore, nutritional content (e.g. healthy fries, low fat chips) may be improved, as well as processing traits for fries, chips, starch and bio-based processors.

(Click picture to watch video)

The Solynta method explained

Solynta's True to Type Potato Seeds allow:

scaling-up to commercial crops in 6 month instead of 5+years for seed tubers
to use True Potato Seeds as starting material instead of Potato Seed Tubers (30grams TPS compares to 2500kilo Seed Tubers)
easy transport: True Potato Seeds are much easier to transport and store compared to perishable Potato Seed Tubers
Potato seeds are many times cheaper to produce than seed tubers. They are a far better starting material than a degenerated clonal vegetated Seed Tuber and they are far less susceptible to diseases compared to tubers so TPS is far better from phytosanitary point of view.

Solynta's technology is a classical breeding technology used in different species over 100s of years and Solynta does not produce Genetically Modified Crops (also known as Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO)) , which makes Solynta's technology worldwide applicable.