INTRODUCTION

In West Germany potato breeding is carried out by private breeders. Nearly 20 breeding stations and breeders' co-operatives are concerned with the breeding of new varieties and clonal selection. In addition to this, four public institutes are working on breeding research to supply the private breeders with basic material. Separate research projects are also handled by university institutes.

The work of the potato breeders is documented in the national list of potato varieties published annually. In the 1985 edition 127 varieties are included. Five of these are for export use only and are not given detailed character descriptions. One hundred and fourteen varieties originate from German breeders; the remainder mainly come from Holland.

The multitude of breeders and varieties makes it impossible to define a uniform potato breeding strategy for West Germany or to give a complete survey of all the differences between the selection systems. In this paper only the main objectives and techniques are presented.

BREEDING OBJECTIVES

In the last 5 years, 42% of the total potato crop (7 million tonnes) has been used as ware potatoes, 29% in the processing industry and 18% for starch production, distillation and fodder (Graf & Menz 1984). Therefore all the breeding stations are producing new ware and starch varieties with intensive selection for processing quality.