| View this email online if it doesn't display correctly |
| | | Was this email forwarded to you? Click here to join our community. |
| | The humble potato has many quirks.
For one, it’s surprisingly complicated to grow at commercial scale. But new technology is about to change that. A Korean company, E Green Global (EGG) has developed a new process for creating seed potatoes. Instead of taking several years to grow them from a stem - which is the conventional way - EGG’s seed potatoes are ready to be planted after two years. This innovation has the potential to rewrite the story of how a potato gets onto your plate.
|
| | | | The Old Potato Story
To cultivate potatoes, theoretically, you can take a bundle, let them sprout and plant them in the ground. The potatoes that grow are genetically identical to the ones you planted, because this is a form of vegetative propagation. Replant those potatoes again, and you have another set of identical offspring.
But growing potatoes at commercial scale remains problematic.
What’s known about potatoes today is that many of them carry viruses, explains Keejoon Shin, an economics major who became a potato expert because he saw a potential for innovation in the way this crop is grown. He was working in the biotech industry in Korea and set out to start his own company, EGG.
“Potatoes are susceptible to over 30 viruses,” he says. These are transmitted by insects. “Once they bite stems or leaves, the plant gets infected. The virus also enters the tubers.”
|
| | Re-planting potatoes from one season to the next isn’t what happens in commercial potato farming. Farmers rely on so-called seed potatoes. These are grown under special conditions to be guaranteed virus free, in a separate process.
As a result, Keejoon explains, only a few countries in the world have a system for growing seed potatoes; countries with advanced agricultural industries, like the US and the Netherlands.
Potato yields in most other countries remain low because there’s a lack of healthy seed potatoes. Poor countries without seed potato production sometimes have to rely on importing them from overseas.
|
| | | | Keejoon and his team at EGG, the company he co-founded in 2009 have found a way to shortcut and standardise seed potato production in a closed lab environment. After many years of R&D and trials their company now can deliver virus-free seed potatoes in a new and faster process.
The company’s process works with any potato variety, which means EGG can produce seeds for rare local varieties on demand at one of their facilities and ship them. According to Keejoon, EGG can do this profitably even in small batches.
Whether it’s helping boost yields on large-scale farms in China, or helping farmers in Sri Lanka preserve native varieties, EGG has the game-changing potential to bring more diversity, and more profitable potato growing practices to farmers and consumers around the world.
|
| | |
|
| | | Want to meet EGG's founder? Discover more unheard stories about agrifoodtech? Join us at Future Food Asia 2019! |
| |
|
