4-13 IAN Fake Potato Seed

 Idaho Seed Potato Law requires that all potatoes for planting purposes offered for sale or distribution into or within Idaho be inspected and certified. Certification agencies such as the Idaho Crop Improvement Association provide inspection and certification services for a variety of seed types, including potatoes. Certifications help to ensure variety purity and health of the seed. Potatoes seen in the supermarket should not be used for seed. They may have been treated to prevent sprouting, which will cause the plant to not produce a viable potato yield. Organic growers are not exempt from this requirement. Certified organic growers are required to plant certified “organic” seed potatoes, as well as, certified seed potatoes tested for major potato diseases.

I wondered if there were unscrupulous potato seed producers that sold counterfeit seed and I asked Michael Cooper was the bureau chief of Idaho’s Department of agriculture: “that can happen I don’t know if there’s anybody unscrupulous, it is state law to have to plant certified seed potatoes what we usually get a lot of is a lot of people who try and cut costs and plant their own eliminators. They want to hold some of their harvest back and planted the next year. You might get away with that for a year or so but the longer you do that you’re going to run into a problem sooner or later. We’ve never run into anybody who is trying to counterfeit certified seed or anything like that, that would be pretty hard to do. Everybody always wants to cut costs but this is not an area where you want to do that.