Thanks to technology from NASA, minituber and seed potato production may soon be blasting off.

The process has allowed a Delavan, Wis., firm--American Ag-Tec International Ltd.--to mass produce pathogen-free minitubers and greatly reduce the time and cost it takes to increase potato seed stock.

Producing pathogen-free minitubers is nothing new. Nearly all certified potato seed stock can be traced back to minitubers, which were propagated through tissue culture. Typically, the process involves growing out tissue cultured plantlets in greenhouses, which are at the mercy of seasonal sun, clouds and temperatures. And most operations only produce one crop of minitubers annually.

"It just takes a long time and there's a lot of hand work involved," says American Ag-Tec President Robert Britt. "The process is costly, and for that reason, only several hundred thousand or possibly a million (minitubers) are produced."

Minitubers are then used to produce seed potatoes, and it typically takes seed producers five to seven field plantings to increase the initial seed stock to commercial quantities.

Minituber manufacturing plant
What Ag-Tec has developed is the patented Quantum Tuber technology that will continually produce several million minitubers annually. From the initial tissue culture, the technology can turn out a crop of minitubers in 40-50 days. The company also has eliminated greenhouses.

"We have a completely computerized growing system that is in an enclosed building that operates for the sole purpose of growing minitubers," Britt says. "We can produce 10 million to 20 million tubers and do it all year long. It's biomanufacturing because it's the same as turning out nuts and bolts but we're turning out minitubers."

The cost of producing each Quantum Tuber--the name under which the minitubers will be marketed--is greatly reduced, so seed potato producers are more willing to plant much larger quantities initially. The result is a new variety can be available in commercial quantities within two years of release.

"The economics of bringing a new variety of potato to the market place is just overwhelming," Britt says. "It may take 10 or more years of breeding. Then there's bringing it to the market and multiplying it. What we are able to do is to take a new variety, and we can have any quantity you want in the marketplace in two years."

And because the seed potatoes are only being grown in the field for two generations compared to the typical five to seven, they should produce more vigorous plants because they haven't accumulated as many pathogens.

Space-age process
Britt admits that Ag-Tec didn't develop the original method for producing the pathogen-free minitubers using tissue culture--that came from China. "What we did was brought it to the United States and test it with the University of Wisconsin to make sure it was valid," Britt says. "It was all of that and was pretty incredible. But we didn't have a large source of labor to cut up little plantlets."

In talking to researchers at the nearby Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics, Britt learned of a technology that allowed space station dwellers to grow tubers in closed environmental growth chambers on long missions. And NASA was looking for an outlet to commercialize the process.

Through collaboration with NASA and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, plant pathology department, Ag-Tec developed a totally computerized minituber production system that didn't rely on Mother Nature.

Ag-Tec personnel harvested the first crop of seed potatoes produced from Quantum Tubers the past fall. Based on the current schedule, the first commercial crop of seed potatoes produced from the technology will be available to growers for the 2002 season.
End

The Grower Magazine, January 2000