Potatoes and War Economy

Abstract

DR. COPISAROW1 has done well to redirect attention at this season to the importance of our being able to produce additional potatoes. Methods of propagation which he cites are the use of tops (for the development of which Prof. Lysenko and his coworkers have recently been awarded the valuable Stalin Prize for Agriculture), of peelings, of eyes (with a small amount of parent tuber attached), and my own preliminary tests with detached sprouts. All of these methods have given satisfactory or at least worthwhile yields, the first having, according to Pravda (October 7, 1942), enabled the Russians to increase their total area under potatoes by 100,000 ha. in 1942, in spite of huge losses in territory and materials; the last method, and the possibilities of storage and vernalization of the detached sprouts, would seem especially worthy of detailed study in Great Britain as by it several effective propagules can readily be obtained from a single tuber without noticeable effect on this last even from a culinary aspect. Thus the self-same tubers can be used first for purposes of propagation and then for food.