Excessive humidity, a sword of Damocles for EU seed potatoes in 2025

Ricardo Ortega The rains have hardly given any respite in the main production areas of Europe, from the north of France and Belgium to the southern half of Holland. In the production areas of Palencia and Burgos it has not stopped raining since August either. Many tubers are rotten because of the rains and it may affect the sowings in the Peninsula, which will mainly begin in January, in the south. In some cases the seed potatoes have been harvested with moisture and this will cause problems. For the agricultural engineer and consultant Fernando Alonso Arce “it is to be expected that the sowings in the south of Spain will have sufficient seed, but as the plantations move northwards the situation will be complicated”. The last important areas to be sown are Galicia and Castilla y León. The situation may be of great importance, since the seed potatoes can only come from EU countries, for both agronomic and legal reasons. In fact, “only Switzerland has varieties equivalent to those ...