Reading Time: 2 minutes Potato wart’s appearance in another Prince Edward Island potato field in August has led to a new round of rules for the province’s potato exports to the U.S. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) on Monday announced new requirements effective “immediately” for such exports, citing the detection of potato wart in 23 fields in the […] Read more
New conditions placed on P.E.I. potato exports to U.S.
Canada’s West Coast ports offer little relief from U.S. delays
Reading Time: 3 minutes Vancouver | Reuters — Gridlock at U.S. West Coast ports that has forced McDonald’s to ration French fries at its Japanese restaurants and interrupted supplies to retailers such as Lululemon is unlikely to be alleviated by routing cargoes through Canada, whose Pacific ports face their own problems. Capacity is already limited at Canada’s largest port, […] Read more
USDA clears GMO potato with lower cancer risk
Reading Time: 2 minutes CORRECTED, Nov. 10, 2014 — Washington | Reuters — The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Friday approved the first genetically modified potato for commercial planting in the United States in more than a decade, a move likely to draw the ire of groups opposed to artificial manipulation of foods. The so-called Innate potato, developed by the […] Read more
Wrigley exec to lead McCain’s in Canada
Reading Time: < 1 minute The president of the Canadian arm of confection maker Wrigley is moving into the head office at McCain Foods’ Canadian business. Shai Altman will take the post of McCain Foods’ president, Canada, effective Oct. 20, replacing Darryl Rowe, who’d held the post since 2010 and announced late last year he’d be leaving the company. Altman, […] Read more
Dutch potato co-op buys control of Alta. seed firm
Reading Time: < 1 minute Dutch potato breeding co-operative Agrico has stepped up its direct interest in the North American seed potato sector by buying control of one of its major seed dealers. The co-op last week announced it has bought a 21 per cent stake in Parkland Seed Potatoes, raising its ownership to 60 per cent of the Edmonton company. […] Read more
P.E.I. field quarantined with potato wart
Reading Time: 2 minutes A 35-acre field on Prince Edward Island is under quarantine and its crops set to be destroyed after the plot was confirmed to have potato wart. The finding was confirmed last week by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which has ordered “movement controls” on all equipment, plants, potato tubers and soil from the affected farm. […] Read more
DuPont to shed Kocide fungicide business
Reading Time: 2 minutes DuPont’s copper fungicide Kocide, used in Canada to manage diseases in bean, potato and assorted hort crops, is set to meet a new maker. DuPont Crop Protection announced Wednesday it will sell its global copper fungicide business — including its Kocide and ManKocide brands and trademarks and its Houston, Tex.-based copper fungicide plant — to […] Read more
Potato storage fungicide throws in three actives
Reading Time: < 1 minute A new post-harvest fungicide to preserve potato crops in storage gathers three active ingredients for use against fusarium dry rot and silver scurf. Syngenta Canada last week announced the rollout for Stadium, a combination of fludioxonil (Group 12), azoxystrobin (Group 11) and difenoconazole (Group 3) for control of fusarium and suppression of silver scurf in […] Read more
McCain to shut P.E.I. fries plant
Reading Time: 2 minutes Prince Edward Island’s potato industry can expect a substantial blow this fall as french-fry giant McCain Foods moves to close its processing plant on the island by the end of October. The New Brunswick company, which supplies fries to both the retail grocery and restaurant and foodservice sectors, announced Thursday it will “cease operations” at […] Read more
Genetic sequencing technologies open doors for potato breeders
Next-generation technologies have ushered in a new era of potato breeding, allowing researchers to select key traits with a high degree of efficiency
Reading Time: 4 minutes The potato genome is a medium-size plant genome, consisting of 12 chromosomes with a haploid length of about 840 million base pairs. In 2011, it was successfully sequenced through the efforts of the Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium (PGSC), an initiative of the Netherlands Genomics Initiative and Wageningen University and Research Centre that combined the efforts […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
