A promising line of blight-resistant potatoes is looking for crowd funding to back a future development.
The Sárvári Research Trust is planning an addition to its nationally listed Sárpo line, which is suited to smallholdings and low-input systems.
Existing Sárpo lines have been successfully exported as far afield as Pakistan and Saint Helena, but stocks of the Crow (short for “Crowd-funded”) line still need to undergo testing for a place on the national list.
“Plant breeders are paying, paying, paying,” Sárvári Trust’s David Shaw told FPJ, though a commercial launch is still a long way off. The trust is appealing to the wider public to raise £5,000 that will meet laboratory fees for a two-year testing programme.
