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Nevada State Seed Potato Certification Program
Potato is
one of the major crops in Nevada. Every year
thousands of acres of potatoes are harvested for
both fresh market and seeds. To ensure all seeds
produced meet the standard, Nevada Department of
Agriculture is authorized to provide seed potato
certification service. For more information
regarding rules and standard, click
Nevada Seed Potato Certification.
Why should seed potatoes be
certified?
Potatoes are propagated by using tubes rather
than true seeds in commercial production. Because
potato tubes carry a wide range of pathogens
especially viruses, the use of non-certified tubes
poses a significant risk of destructive epidemics of
diseases in fields. Those pathogens carried by tubes
are called seed-borne pathogens. To prevent
spreading of the diseases through commercial tubes,
potato tubes used for sowing should be certified to
meet disease tolerance levels. Each state has its
own seed potato standard, however, there is only a
little difference among states. Seed lots that have
passed certification should be quite safe to be used
in planting during the coming season.
How does certification work?
Seed potato certification is a voluntary program
in which commercial growers choose to participate.
Once growers submit an application, Inspectors from
Nevada Department of Agriculture will inspect each
field entered for certification for diseases
including viruses, bacteria and nematodes. Plant
samples will be taken during field inspections and
brought into plant pathology laboratory for further
testing. Fields are inspected at least twice, and
usually at the end of the season, harvest and
storage inspections will be made. During the winter,
randomly selected potato tubes will be planted in
Oceanside, CA to detect any latent viral diseases,
which is called winter test. A seed lot that passed
all inspections and tests will be granted a class of
certified seed, which is the immediate next class to
the original class from which it grows from.
What is the advantage of
certified seed potatoes?
Certified seed potatoes generally have higher
value than non-certified seed potatoes because of
high quality and much lower risk of carrying
tube-borne pathogens. Growers using certified seed
potatoes will receive profit from high yield and
quality of potatoes. Also, using certified seed
potatoes will protect your farm from invasion of
other tube-borne diseases.
What is the limitation of
certified seed potatoes?
Certification is not a seamless system to
guarantee 100% pathogen-free seed lots. It is not
likely to occur in a natural production system.
Furthermore, it is not necessary to reach this goal
because meeting certain tolerance level is good
enough to prevent significant damages to the coming
crop. The major limitations on certification are
that inspections are based on samples rather than
all plants and that plants may not show symptoms
when inspected. However, our well-developed field
inspection protocol and back-up laboratory testing
have overcome these limitations, which ensure that
the seed potatoes certified have higher quality and
meet standard disease tolerance levels.
What pathogens are mostly
concerned?
Root-knot nematode (Meloidogyne spp.),
potato ring rot virus, potato corky ring spot virus,
potato virus Y-NTN strain, and spindle tuber viroid
are of zero tolerance. Presence of any of these
pathogens before or during growing will revoke the
eligibility for certification. Other diseases such
as potato leaf roll virus, potato virus X, Y, S, and
M have to meet certain tolerance levels.
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