Salad Potato Development Project
A co-developed project by Teagasc, Irish Farmers Association and Bord Bia.
The overall purpose of the program was to increase the level of information to existing growers and ultimately increase the quantity of salad potatoes grown in Ireland. This involved equipping the industry with the necessary skills and knowledge to sustainably develop their potato enterprises
Objective
The program has five objectives
- Improve existing growers knowledge in all areas (agronomy/storage) of growing salad potatoes
- Increase the total quantity of salad potatoes grown in Ireland
- Grow the market for indigenously grown salad potatoes to keep pace with increased production
- Increase the number of growers supply salad potatoes
- Upskill the industry on storage of salad potatoes
- Leave a legacy of information for growers to use after the program is finished
- Workshop 1 (PDF)
- The Salad potato Market
- Costs of Production
- Production issues
- Workshop 2 (PDF)
- Demo Crop
- Herbicides
- Phosphate use to increase tube count
- Fungicides
- Irrigation
- Demo Crop
- Workshop 3.1 Workshop 3.2(PDF)
- deciding when to harvest,
- desiccation techniques,
- yield assessment digs,
- test dig results
- importance of skin set,
- understanding risk of skin disease and pest damage, harvester settings,
- irrigation to protect skin quality,
- management for long term storage
- Workshop 4.1 Workshop 4.2 (PDF)
- Economics of salad potato production (assessment of costs and potential profitability)
- Session 1 Quality of demo varieties
- Session 2 Storage
- Long term storage of potato (the basics)
- store management and box layout,
- Sprout management – storing salad potatoes until February-March?
- Session 3 Economics
