From the famine to a dinnertime staple and a bag of chips after a night out, as a country Ireland has a long and varied relationship with the humble spud. So what better way to mark today, National Potato Day, than the inaugural Carlow Rooster Festival?
Rooster is one of Ireland’s most popular potatoes and its roots are firmly fixed in Co Carlow, having been developed there throughout the late 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. It was one of many varieties bred at Teagasc Oak Park by Harry Kehoe and his team.
The Carlow connection to the Rooster was celebrated in style today and will continue to be over the coming days, with much happening both around Carlow Town and in Oak Park. Irish Country Living visited Oak Park today, where 500 secondary school agricultural science students milled around, listening to the information on offer and participating in the events that kicked off the festival.
In the field
The Teagasc team provided an array of material for the visiting students today, including talks on potato breeding and a farm machinery exhibition.
In conjunction with Bord Bia, dietitian Aoife Hearne spoke about the nutritional importance of spuds. While chef Edward Hayden gave a cookery demonstration showing the versatility of potatoes.
To mark National Potato Day, Bord Bia also launched its Potato Survival Kit for students in Oak Park. It is a booklet that offers ‘basic training’ on cooking potatoes, along with highlighting their many different uses in cooking.
Rooster potatoes.
All of this information, activates and more will be on offer to the public tomorrow at the Oak Park open day from 12pm-5pm, along with the highlight feature of the day, the National Potato Picking Championships.
Teams of five will compete to see who can pick the most potatoes in two minutes and the competition is highly anticipated. Parents and their children can also pick their own bag of spuds tomorrow and tours of Oak Park House, museum and ice-house will take place.
Setting the seed
Teagasc has been breeding potatoes since 1962, originally the main objective of its programme was to breed varieties for the Irish market. However, during the 1970s it began working with IPM Potato Group to market its different varieties of potatoes all around the world, as well as domestically. Now Teagasc's potatoes grow on all of the continents bar Antarctica.
Denis Griffin is a potato breeder with Teagasc, who works on breading new, improved potato varieties. Speaking today in Oak Park, he said that Rooster was the first variety suitable for the Irish market from the original breeding scheme.
“It was originally crossed in the glasshouse here in 1976, it took many years of development to bring it to the market place, but eventually in 1991 it was released. Very quickly it became popular right across the country, both with farmers, consumers and supermarkets,” he explained.
“The Irish have a very specific taste profile, they prefer a high dry matter potato, a floury potato, and Rooster is that. I think Rooster at the time when it came out, it was shallower eyed, the name was very good and the red skin was very distinctive.
“Around this same time Ireland was beginning to develop a lot of cold stores, growers were mechanising. Rooster is suited to storage, so it is a variety that can be stored throughout the year much better than previous varieties.”
Between 8,000 and 9,000ha of potatoes are grown across the country, and now 29 years after its release, Rooster accounts for 60% of the total area of potatoes produced in the country.
Looking forward
Clearly, Rooster has been massively successful since it was introduced to the Irish market, but could another variety overtake it in the future? John Spink, head of Teagasc's Crops, Environment and Land Use Programme (CELUP), thinks it is possible.
“Obviously we are striving to do that all of the time, but you are trying to combine a huge number of characteristics in a potato variety in terms of its disease resistance, its quality, its yield and everything else,” he said. “Trying to get maybe 50 different characteristics at the right level all in the one spud, at the one time, is a hell of a job to do.
John Spink, head of Teagasc's Crops, Environment and Land Use Programme (CELUP).
“Potatoes are quite different to a lot of tillage crops, in that people buy them on name. You don’t go into a supermarket and say ‘I want bread made with a certain variety of wheat’, but you go in and buy a particular variety of spuds. So spud varieties tend to last a lot longer. Some of them are over 100 years old and we are still buying them.
“It is quite rare to get a very successful potato, but obviously it is something we are continually striving to do. If it there are 50 characteristics you are trying to get, you might get a really good spud and then find after 10 years that one of the 50 is not right and whole thing doesn’t take off.”
For more information on events taking place as part of the Carlow Rooster Festival, see www.lovecarlow.ie.
Read more
First Carlow Rooster Festival to be held next week
My Farming Week: Thomas and Bernard McKeown, Castletown, Co Meath
From the famine to a dinnertime staple and a bag of chips after a night out, as a country Ireland has a long and varied relationship with the humble spud. So what better way to mark today, National Potato Day, than the inaugural Carlow Rooster Festival?
Rooster is one of Ireland’s most popular potatoes and its roots are firmly fixed in Co Carlow, having been developed there throughout the late 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. It was one of many varieties bred at Teagasc Oak Park by Harry Kehoe and his team.
The Carlow connection to the Rooster was celebrated in style today and will continue to be over the coming days, with much happening both around Carlow Town and in Oak Park. Irish Country Living visited Oak Park today, where 500 secondary school agricultural science students milled around, listening to the information on offer and participating in the events that kicked off the festival.
In the field
The Teagasc team provided an array of material for the visiting students today, including talks on potato breeding and a farm machinery exhibition.
In conjunction with Bord Bia, dietitian Aoife Hearne spoke about the nutritional importance of spuds. While chef Edward Hayden gave a cookery demonstration showing the versatility of potatoes.
To mark National Potato Day, Bord Bia also launched its Potato Survival Kit for students in Oak Park. It is a booklet that offers ‘basic training’ on cooking potatoes, along with highlighting their many different uses in cooking.
Rooster potatoes.
All of this information, activates and more will be on offer to the public tomorrow at the Oak Park open day from 12pm-5pm, along with the highlight feature of the day, the National Potato Picking Championships.
Teams of five will compete to see who can pick the most potatoes in two minutes and the competition is highly anticipated. Parents and their children can also pick their own bag of spuds tomorrow and tours of Oak Park House, museum and ice-house will take place.
Setting the seed
Teagasc has been breeding potatoes since 1962, originally the main objective of its programme was to breed varieties for the Irish market. However, during the 1970s it began working with IPM Potato Group to market its different varieties of potatoes all around the world, as well as domestically. Now Teagasc's potatoes grow on all of the continents bar Antarctica.
Denis Griffin is a potato breeder with Teagasc, who works on breading new, improved potato varieties. Speaking today in Oak Park, he said that Rooster was the first variety suitable for the Irish market from the original breeding scheme.
“It was originally crossed in the glasshouse here in 1976, it took many years of development to bring it to the market place, but eventually in 1991 it was released. Very quickly it became popular right across the country, both with farmers, consumers and supermarkets,” he explained.
“The Irish have a very specific taste profile, they prefer a high dry matter potato, a floury potato, and Rooster is that. I think Rooster at the time when it came out, it was shallower eyed, the name was very good and the red skin was very distinctive.
“Around this same time Ireland was beginning to develop a lot of cold stores, growers were mechanising. Rooster is suited to storage, so it is a variety that can be stored throughout the year much better than previous varieties.”
Between 8,000 and 9,000ha of potatoes are grown across the country, and now 29 years after its release, Rooster accounts for 60% of the total area of potatoes produced in the country.
Looking forward
Clearly, Rooster has been massively successful since it was introduced to the Irish market, but could another variety overtake it in the future? John Spink, head of Teagasc's Crops, Environment and Land Use Programme (CELUP), thinks it is possible.
“Obviously we are striving to do that all of the time, but you are trying to combine a huge number of characteristics in a potato variety in terms of its disease resistance, its quality, its yield and everything else,” he said. “Trying to get maybe 50 different characteristics at the right level all in the one spud, at the one time, is a hell of a job to do.
John Spink, head of Teagasc's Crops, Environment and Land Use Programme (CELUP).
“Potatoes are quite different to a lot of tillage crops, in that people buy them on name. You don’t go into a supermarket and say ‘I want bread made with a certain variety of wheat’, but you go in and buy a particular variety of spuds. So spud varieties tend to last a lot longer. Some of them are over 100 years old and we are still buying them.
“It is quite rare to get a very successful potato, but obviously it is something we are continually striving to do. If it there are 50 characteristics you are trying to get, you might get a really good spud and then find after 10 years that one of the 50 is not right and whole thing doesn’t take off.”
For more information on events taking place as part of the Carlow Rooster Festival, see www.lovecarlow.ie.
Read more
First Carlow Rooster Festival to be held next week
My Farming Week: Thomas and Bernard McKeown, Castletown, Co Meath
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