As the fall is rapidly turning into winter in my area, I am scrambling to harvest my True Potato Seed grown seedling potatoes. A potato reveal of this row is of particular interest to me, as many of my highest yielding seedlings from the past were the parents of the seed that produced this seedlot. I've already dug some of these in a previous video.

The grandmother of all of these seedlings was Sarpo Mira, which is an extremely popular potato in the UK and parts of Europe. Sarpo Mira was developed by the Sarvari Trust, and is a long season, pink skinned, floury potato with extremely high yields and excellent field resistance to Late Blight. A fellow potato breeder here in the US crossed Sarpo Mira with a bulk mix of pollen from several high performing potato varieties. That Sarpo Mira X Bulk Pollen TPS was the source of the parents of this seedlot. I collected berries from the seedlings of the original mix, and saved the true potato seed as a bulk seedlot instead of collecting from individual seedlings. So there are a variety of parents in the row, and the possible fathers of each plant is completely unknown. The genetic variabilty that is possible from tetraploid Solanum tuberosum is fully evident as we dig these, as record breaking seedlings are pulled out right next to plants that yield almost nothing. The range of color is also marked, as well as shape. In the next video when we weigh these up, we will get a better sense of their flesh qualities, and what colors and textures they are showing. I am hoping very much to find some floury potatoes with great yield.

After digging these seedlings, I've been able to weigh them to get a record of their yield, but the weigh in footage will have to be saved for another video to keep video length reasonable. I will say that 5 of the seedlings dug in this row have broken my previous record of 8 pounds. So stay tuned for a future view of that!