Science in Agriculture

Cari Schmitz

Carley is a plant scientist and potato breeder. Cari’s job as a potato breeder involves working with potato farmers to help them grow better potatoes. To accomplish this, Cari uses science and technology to develop potatoes with traits that make them easier to grow, and also taste better.

How does Cari breed potatoes?

Once Cari finds a potato variety that tastes good, she tests it to make sure it doesn’t have any diseases (just like humans, plants can get sick too!). The great tasting potato might not grow well in our cool Minnesota climate, so Cari will find another variety of potato that grows well in cold climates. These potatoes are called cold-hardy.

Cari will then breed the great tasting potato with a cold-hardy potato. The great tasting potato and the cold-hardy potato are the "parent" potatoes. By combining the traits of these two different types of potatoes, Cari hopes to produce a new type of potato that has inherited the great tasting trait from one parent, and the cold-hardy trait from the other parent.

This process of breeding potatoes can take many years. If Cari is successful, she will have helped develop a variety of potatoes that Minnesota farmers can grow and that we can eat.

Potatoes are grown in three areas of Minnesota: under irrigation on the sandy soils from Elk River to Park Rapids, on the rich soils of the Red River Valley from Fergus Falls north to Canada, and on peat soils near Albert Lea.