Chinese researchers have come up with an innovative idea to ‘climate-proof’ one of their country’s – and the world’s – most important foods. They’re growing potatoes in greenhouses, like tomatoes and cucumbers. – And ‘upside-down!
Potatoes growing year-round in a Chinese greenhouse…
It seems counter-intuitive at the least – ridiculous at worst – to suggest that we should be growing something like like potatoes above ground. Like tomatoes on the vine. With the tubers just hanging there in the open air. But Chinese researches say it may be the best way to climate-proof the staple crop…
Old tech, fresh inspiration
When I was in high school, I had a crush, for one glorious summer, on a guy named Gordy. His family had come to Canada after the Second World War, during which their native Netherlands had been gutted then steamrolled by the advancing, then retreating Nazis. His people had been farmers who had lost everything. And Canada was rumoured to be a ‘land of golden opportunity’.
So over they came – all 9 of them – and quickly put down roots. Gordy’s dad got a job at the Fiberglas Pink Insulation plant near their new semi-rural home. Unable to leave his green-thumb past behind him, and to produce extra income, he built a large heated greenhouse that occupied almost of the family’s spacious new back yard. And he plunged right in, growing alternating crops of perfect toma-toes and cucumbers, year round.
It was a pretty good deal: He was selling locally-grown, vine ripened produce to restaurants, hotels and caterers at top prices. In the dead of the Canadian Winter, when half-ripened imported produce was already fetching unbelievable prices, he was getting much more: I remember Gordy saying his dad could get $2.95 for a 6-qt. / 5.7 L basket of tomatoes. That translates to just under $24 per basket in today’s dollars!
Anyway…
Aside from being a potential windfall for farmers, growing potatoes with only their lower, fibrous roots shrouded in high-quality soil in small pots, and suspending the rest of the plant from a wood or metal grid above seems odd. Something, perhaps, that The Martian (2015) might have tried while stranded and facing starving on the Red Planet.
But according to researchers, it might be a viable, sustainable means of growing the tuber all year-round. And producing multiple crops per year might be a means of making up for two deficiencies of the accelerated selective breeding program the scientists are working on now. They’ve been able to develop varieties of a couple of the country’s already higher-yielding spud types to withstand the markedly higher temperatures that climate change is rapidly bringing on. But the tubers are smaller than the original varieties’.
“Their research, published in the journal Climate Smart Agriculture this month, found the higher tem-peratures accelerated tuber growth by 10 days but cut potato yields by more than half,” Al Jazeera reports.
My take
Team leader, molecular biologist Li Jieping, of the International Potato Center (CIP) in Beijing, says, folks who still want to grow potatoes outside, directly in the ground, could do so. But he cautions, they’ll have to plant during spring instead of at the start of summer, or move to even higher altitudes to escape the heat.
Li also says there’s still much work to be done to boost yields, as well as fortify even newer varieties of potatoes against the effects of increasing risk of drought and flooding.
But another group of Chinese researchers revealed earlier this year, that they had developed new type of rice – another indispensable global staple – which could thrive in brackish coastal waters, dramatically increasing the land area suitable for growing the crop.
Yes, there’s a lot of work to be done before we can say our food supply is sustainable, much less totally climate-proof. But the Chinese, at least, are doing their part. And the rest of us will benefit…
~ Maggie J.