Texas A&M releases a potato bred for southern heat and resistance to potato virus Y

Potato virus Y can take up to 80% of a field's yield when nothing holds it back ^[12]. That is a worst-case ceiling. What the trait is worth on a particular farm depends on the virus pressure in the district and on what the grower already spends keeping it down. The release announcement does not include trial yields for Duncan Russet or a figure for how strongly it resists the virus. Vales called the resistance a "big deal" for growers in Texas and warmer climates around the U.S. ^[11].

Fourteen commercial releases since 1998 is roughly one every two years ^[19]. The more than $11 million those varieties have generated in licensing revenue ^[3] works out to about $786,000 each ^[18], and spread across the 28 years it averages under $400,000 a year ^[20]. The average understates the recent run: the Intellectual Property and Commercialization Office for Texas A&M AgriLife reports that over the past decade the program's annual licensing income has ranked among the highest of any breeding program in the Texas A&M University System ^[4]. Nearly 150 U.S. and Canadian companies have taken licenses ^[2], about 11 per variety ^[21].

"We want to give growers here in Texas and other parts of the country more options that reduce input costs or improve their access to the market, or both," Vales said ^[16]. Virus resistance is one way to do that: once the trait is in the seed, it does not add a per-acre cost at planting.

The genetics came out of a shared pool. Vales said the program built its foundation on decades of collaboration, trading breeding material among 12 national public potato programs, mainly partners in Colorado and California, plus Oregon, Idaho and Washington ^[6]. Its own clone bank holds more than 245 advanced breeding lines covering market classes, disease-resistance packages and heat-tolerance traits ^[8]. Large-scale variety trials run on commercial ground, with CSS Farms near Dalhart and Springlake Potatoes near Lubbock providing the land and the equipment ^[10].

Because a variety can take more than a decade to develop ^[9], the crosses behind an August release were made more than ten years earlier ^[22]. Heat tolerance selected in those seasons is now being offered against the summers that follow. Two earlier fresh-market russets, Vanguard and Reveille, were bred for heat tolerance and higher yields of marketable tubers in warm areas ^[14], and Dune Russet, a processing line, holds its light fry color after months in cold storage, where most potatoes brown the longer they sit ^[15].

Vales is also studying whether deeper flesh colors, from yellow to pink to purple, open marketing for chips and fries, and the report notes that deeper colors correlate with higher antioxidant content ^[17]. The correlation sits in the tuber. An effect in the person who eats it would be a separate measurement.