Seed potato certification
Ensuring our potatoes are the best they can be is of top importance to our industry. The main way we do that is through our Seed Potato Certification quality assurance programme.
Seed potatoes that have been ticked off through this programme are then certified as being 'true to type', and free from disease within certain tolerances. Find out more about Seed Potato Certification.
This programme, which is run by Potatoes New Zealand's Seed Potato Certification Authority, currently only covers part of the process: from the moment the seeds are put into the soil until they are harvested. That means there's no assurance that the cultivars the seed potato growers receive are top quality, or that the way they are stored or transported is up to scratch. We believe this creates a significant breakdown in the programme's ability to fully certify the seed potatoes as a quality product.
This gap was identified in a review of the seed certification process Potatoes New Zealand completed in 2005. We are moving to fix the issue. It's going to be a big job but, as of October 2011, we aim to require everyone involved in developing, growing, storing and transporting seed potatoes to be registered under a quality assurance programme, whether that be the Authority's scheme, New Zealand GAP (Good Agricultural Practice) or another programme.
Currently, work is underway to determine how this could be carried out and what any repercussions might be. But it is something we are pushing hard to implement as we believe it is integral to our ability to guarantee, and certify, our top-quality product.
