100 years of Wisconsin certified seed potatoes – Audio
Amy Charkowski, Wisconsin Certified Seed Potato Program
Department of Plant Pathology
UW-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
acharkowski@wisc.edu
(608) 262-7911
100 years of Wisconsin certified seed potatoes
For more information: http://labs.russell.wisc.edu/seedpotato/
3:06 Total Time
0:18 – What is certified seed potato
0:39 – Why it’s important
1:05 – A stable, beneficial program
1:38 – Advances in next 100 years
2:09 – Early history
2:45 – Helping families
2:56 – Lead out
TRANSCRIPT
Celebrating 100 years of certified seed potatoes in Wisconsin. We’re visiting today with Amy Charkowski, Department of Plant Pathology, University of Wisconsin in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Madison, Wisconsin, and I am Sevie Kenyon.
Sevie Kenyon: Amy, 100 years of certifying seed potatoes: what does that mean?
Amy Charkowski: For the past century, the University of Wisconsin has been involved in ensuring that seed potatoes produced in Wisconsin are healthy and of the variety that they’re supposed to be. It was a program that was started as a collaboration between leading farmers from northern Wisconsin and faculty in the horticulture department.
Sevie Kenyon: Why is a certified seed potato program so important?
Amy Charkowski: Growing seed potatoes is a very difficult thing for farmers to do, and the certification is important because it helps reduce pests and diseases in the seed crop, it helps ensure the variety that’s being produced, it helps the farmers export to other states and to other countries. And certification is tied with the university. We’re able to apply the latest findings in disease control and production almost immediately.
Sevie Kenyon: Amy, what has changed?
Amy Charkowski: Remarkably little. The goals that they set forward in 1913, where they wanted to have a healthy seed crop and they wanted to have known varieties and that’s still what we do today. I think it’s amazing how stable the program has been, the cost of certification, adjusted for inflation, essentially hasn’t changed since 1914. I think part of the reason it’s been stable is one, it’s been a program that’s needed to maintain a healthy, productive crop, and then also it’s run as a partnership between the farmers and the University.
Sevie Kenyon: What kind of advances are we going to see in the next 100 years?
Amy Charkowski: Well, there’s a lot of possibilities. I would anticipate that laboratory testing will become a bigger piece of what we do because it’s becoming cheaper and more efficient all the time. Right now, we have no genetically engineered potatoes on the market. If that becomes common, we’ll see a lot of the diseases controlled that way. There’s also some research to look at making potato a true seed crop, sort of like we grow tomato. If that should happen- where we’re seeing hybrid true seed- that will change the market, too.
Sevie Kenyon: Can you describe some of the early history of the certified program?
Amy Charkowski: To help get farmers involved and find the best varieties that can be grown here and the best places to grow them, they had a train car, and they travelled around Wisconsin on the train. Their ‘potato special’ is what they called it. And they used their train car to reach literally thousands of farm families and then help them learn to grow better seed potatoes. By 1913, they had a group of- well it was over 100 farmers that were interested in becoming seed growers, and they put together this association and the certification program and just started in 1913 and certified their first crop in 1914 and have been running since then.
Sevie Kenyon: What is it that you like about this line of work?
Amy Charkowski: To me, it’s a really enjoyable area to work because I’m working mainly with families. And I know the owners of the businesses. When we can solve a problem I feel really good that I’ve helped a family out.
Sevie Kenyon: We’ve been visiting with Amy Charkowski, Department of Plant Pathology, University of Wisconsin in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Madison, Wisconsin, and I am Sevie Kenyon.