TPS, Amarilla Temprana, 100 true seeds

True potato seed information and growing instructions

True potato seeds are classified as breeding seeds and germination is not guaranteed.

Amarilla Temprana is a tetraploid potato collected in Los Lagos, Chile in 1958.  It is notable for high yield and male fertility.

Culinary Traits

Amarilla Temprana produces mostly white to pink tubers with the occasional darker red or blue.  Some are bicolor with spectacled eyes.  Flesh ranges from white to light yellow, rarely with a blue ring.  Most are starchy and more suitable for dry than wet cooking, but there is quite a bit of variation. Tubers are round and max out at about four inches in diameter.  The skin is thin and does not need to be peeled.

Agronomic Traits

Amarilla Temprana is a rare Chilean potato with A type cytoplasm.  This is a great combination because it has day neutral tuberization but is also fully fertile.  Most of the Chilean potatoes have T type cytoplasm, which confers male sterility.  Average maturity is about four months, but there is considerable variation and some plants are a month earlier, while others are late and will survive until killed by frost.  Tubers have long dormancy.  Tubers show higher than average suscepibility to scab here.  Flowering is generally heavy and it is easy to select for heavy seed producers.

True Seed (TPS)

True seed was collected in 2020 and was open pollinated, which includes intermittent hand pollination.  I pollinated with bulk pollen from tetraploids, so there could be greater variety in the next generation.  Germination was a bit slow in 2021, about 12 days, probably indicating dormancy.  By 2022, germination should be faster.