It would be wrong to let this year slip by without paying tribute to a man whose career and life in agriculture was acknowledged by the awarding of an honorary doctorate from UCD in 2016. I refer to Harry Kehoe, whose career as a potato breeder in Oak Park spanned many decades and his legacy includes many commercial varieties, with Rooster being best known.

I always regard plant breeding as much as a vocation as a profession. Perhaps Harry would disagree, but it seems to require a huge knowledge of science and genetics balanced with common sense, a good gut feel and dirt under the nails.

Harry graduated from UCD in 1958 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Science degree. He began working with An Foras Taluntais, now Teagasc, in 1960. The potato breeding programme started in Oak Park in 1962 and Harry led the programme there for over 40 years. At the end of this time, he was described as “one of Europe’s most renowned potato breeders”.

Harry Kehoe retired from Teagasc in 2003 and he was conferred with an honorary degree of doctor of science last September at the UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science. This was in recognition of his lifetime’s work and success as a plant breeder.

Objectives

When the first breeding crosses were made, the aim was to breed for better quality, higher yield and improved blight resistance for Ireland. Quickly, the programme expanded to tens of thousands of seedlings for evaluation and progress was evident. It quickly became apparent that many of the new types were low dry matter and the focus with these switched away from the Irish market and towards Mediterranean countries.

Cara was my first memory of Harry’s varieties and its big tubers were certainly too waxy for my palate. But it was successful and it could bulk, both below and above ground. This low dry matter trait meant that the first varieties released from the Oak Park programme were targeted at foreign markets. These varieties were handled by Irish Potato Marketing Ltd (IPM), which was the sole agent for varieties such as Cara, Clada, Mizen, Red Cara and Avondale.

Cara remains one of the most successful potato varieties bred by Harry. It is still grown in the UK, Egypt and the Canary Islands, almost 40 years after its release.

Throughout his career, Harry worked closely with IPM and many of his varieties continue to be successfully marketed in over 40 countries. The royalty income from these varieties provided considerable financial support to the breeding programme at Oak Park. Because of this support, the breeding effort has been heavily focused on breeding varieties for England and seed importing countries in the Mediterranean.

Variety successes

From the early days, one of the objectives was to produce a good-quality red-skinned early maincrop or maincrop variety. This needed to be suitable for the home ware trade and have good disease resistance, especially to blight. There was also a focus on types suitable for processing into crisps and chips.

It is now some time since Rooster came to the market. Since its launch in 1991, it has become the dominant potato variety in the Irish market and accounts for about 65% of Irish ware production.

This was only one of the 35 plus potato varieties bred by Harry Kehoe and his team at Oak Park. Other names include Balmoral, Cultra, Colleen and Slaney.

Seed of these and other varieties is primarily grown in Ireland and Scotland and exported to countries such as England, Cyprus, Canary Islands, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Greece, Spain, Portugal and the Azores etc.

For what you have done for the potato sector Harry, the industry is extremely grateful.