First Halophile Potatoes Harvested

Razgorov Prikazka writes "A Dutch-based company from Groningen is trying to create a potato race that is able to survive in a saline environment. The first test-batch was just harvested (English translation of Dutch original) on the island Texel and seem to be in good shape. The company states that rising sea-levels will create a demand for halophile crops. I do wonder if one still has to put salt on ones potatoes when they are grown in salt water."

Comments

Halophile

[Anonymous Coward]

From the title, I thought they'd made potatoes that love to molest Halo players.

Re:Halophile

[Low Ranked Craig]

Those are called potato chips, generally served with Mountain Dew, and molest from the GI tract outward...

Re:Halophile

[mangu]

I thought it meant potatoes that love to play Halo.

You mean, like couch potatoes?

Re:Halophile

[dov_0]

... trying to create a potato race ...

In news just to hand, the new race has formed a political party of Sebago Supremacists demanding new rights based on their need for 'kartoffelns-raum'. The group spokesman, Herr Kartoffelnkopf, gave a statement denying rumours of armament against field borders.

The tubers are almost certainly not salty.

[hey!]

I'm guessing that they managed to coax the potatoes into maintaining their normal osmotic balance when watered with brackish water. For one thing a crop that absorbed the salt would be hard to get consistent.

Re:The tubers are almost certainly not salty.

[linzeal]

As long as you can get a solution going with the water you are using on the potatoes it will likely precipitate out of the soil and enter the groundwater. From there, eventually it will get to the sea.

Re:The tubers are almost certainly not salty.

[Foobar_]

Wouldn't this lead to a build-up of salt in the soil itself? At some point, that's bound to cause problems... They don't call it "salting the earth" for nothing.

We already have regular potatoes that grow just fine with fresh water. These new halophile potatoes won't be grown on regular farmland.

There are large areas of coast and riverbank that have no easy access to fresh water, but plenty of salt or brackish water. There are also an increasing number of agricultural areas who use reclaimed wastewater (greywater) to irrigate their fields. Finally, sea levels are expected to rise due to Manbearpig, and this will increase the amount of floodplain affected by brackish water.

This new strain of potato is going to be grown in areas with brackish water, on or near estuaries, and probably to a lesser extent areas irrigated with lightly-treated greywater. Depending on how much salt they can tolerate, you might eventually see them being grown underneath coconut.

Re:The tubers are almost certainly not salty.

[allaunjsilverfox2]

Couldn't this also be used for hydroponically grown produce? It would be incredibly useful for those that are required to spend long periods of time in high salinity areas. For example, navy ships, Oil rigs, Exploration ships and island dwelling nations?

Re:The tubers are almost certainly not salty.

[icebike]

I'm guessing that they managed to coax the potatoes into maintaining their normal osmotic balance when watered with brackish water.

And guessing is all you can do here.

How does a one paragraph blurb in an obscure website warrant a slash dot post. (And no, I'm not exactly new here.)

There isn't a shred of attribution, no backup data, no contact information, nothing there but an assertion that potatoes were picked. Even the exif info was stripped from the photo.

Further, its not particularly newsworthy. Its been studied before by the USDA. http://www.springerlink.com/content/x217188337503232/

They created a group to help this new potato race

[Anonymous Coward]

The National Association for the Advancement of Created Potatoes (NAACP) will fight for the rights of these new potatoes. And end the abuse of potatoes in such dishes as poutine and instant mashes.

Salt

[Teun]

I do wonder if one still has to put salt on ones potatoes when they are grown in salt water.

Do you put salt on your fish?

Re:Salt

[forkazoo]

Do you put salt on your fish?

No. Do you put oil on your fish?

Re:Salt

[Khyber]

Your answer is doubly ridiculous.

While the fish is alive, sure, it doesn't absorb.

Once it's dead, we can make it absorb anything we want. Hi, it's called brining, pickling, or marinating.

Jeeze, you'd think someone old enough to use a keyboard could learn some basic cooking skills.

Re:Salt

[Anonymous Coward]

Normally, yes, but ever since a couple months ago the fish have just been coming that way.

Re:Salt

[X0563511]

It's not the facts that get you downmodded, it's your belligerent attitude.

Non-machine translation

[RobVB]

Eenrum potato resistant to salt water

EENRUM - The first potatoes, which a company called Biemond (based in Eenrum), fed with salt water, were lifted on a test field on the island of Texel on friday.

Biemond is breeding new races of potatoes, and together with Fobek in the Frisian town of Sint Annaparochie, wants to develop potatoes that are resistant to salt water.

Due to rising sea levels companies expect farmers to increasingly have to deal with salt water on their fields.

The biggest mistakes Google Translate made were due to use of the word "piepers" for "potatoes". It was incorrectly translated as squeaker and pager - at least I think it's incorrectly. I've never heard anyone use those words when talking about potatoes.

Re:Non-machine translation

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect that "salt water on their fields" in the sense of "field is actually under the sea" is going to be a relatively rare issue, except in places that are coastal already and extremely flat.

The big, ugly, much more widespread problem, though, is going to be aquifer infiltration. Groundwater is, well, underground, so your groundwater can easily be below sea level even if you are substantially above sea level(and, even if you are pumping from, say, 100 ft underground, you are getting water from a variety of levels, depending on the exact nature of the geological strata down there. Unless there is an impermiable layer just below your well depth, you'll have some amount of diffusion from below.).

Since virtually everyone is overpumping their aquifers anyway(though it is considered impolite to talk about it), even if sea levels stay exactly as they are it is expected that more groundwater is going to face seawater or deep saltwater(salt is a mineral, after all, and occurs in some geological strata quite naturally. If exposed to groundwater, it will form delicious brine just fine) infiltration. If the water you are using for irrigation is even slightly brackish, the salt levels in your fields will increase over time. Salt in the water gets sprayed on, water evaporates, salt doesn't, soil contains more salt. Repeat next season...

The "zOMG global warming, seas devouring the lands" angle is an easy way to give the story a topical flavor(plus, these guys are dutch, being underwater isn't a theoretical problem for them); but the need for agriculturally useful halophiles would exist even if sea levels don't budge at all, due to overuse and misuse of groundwater reserves.

Re:Non-machine translation

[Bruce Perens]

Holland really does have appreciable farmland below sea level. They built dikes around their marshes centuries ago, pumped them out with windmills, pumped out their fresh water aquifers, and as the land dries up it shrinks and settles. Today it can be tens of feet below sea level. California is also experiencing this in the Sacramento River delta, and no doubt it is common elsewhere.

Re:No need to add salt?

[Shikaku]

That would save me 3 or 4 arm shakes. woot!

That's how much needed to get something salty out from people these days? What happened to people?

A good start, but...

[DoofusOfDeath]

Wake me when they develop bacon-butter-sourcream-phile potatoes. I'll be the first to switch to farming for a (short-lived) career.

Colloquial squeaker

[Teun]

The RTVNoord article used the Dutch colloquial pieper for the more common aardappel and Google translated it to squeaker.

What's the salt concentration?

[Animats]

It's not clear how high a salt concentration these potatoes tolerate. Probably lower than sea water. The article indicates that they're trying to make potatoes tolerant of salt water incursions into ground water. In areas with low-lying coastlines, groundwater becomes increasingly salty nearer to the ocean. This makes near-coastal land more useful.

A few crops, like "salt hay", will grow in seawater, even on tidal flats. Historically, though, the crops that will grow in those conditions are of marginal value.

Re:What in the h*** is a potato race?

[Natlaw]

No, it's means a different variety (the Dutch 'aardappel ras' perhaps incorrectly machine translated to 'potato race').

almost as good as "feed tuna mayonaise"

[Robb]

which is from Night Shift (1982)

Re:They created a group to help this new potato ra

[Sponge Bath]

Poutine is murder! - Potato Ethical Treatment Association (PETA)

Re:They created a group to help this new potato ra

[Dirtside]

Digger, please.

Master Chef

[aapold]

These potatos will be served.... by Master Chef.