Certification Minnesota

SUMMARY OF CERTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS
  1. All potatoes planted within a farming operation must be approved for certification and entered for inspection.
  2. All equipment and storage facilities within the farming operation must be used only for certified seed potatoes.
  3. Each seed field must undergo at least two inspections during the growing season.
  4. Storage facilities and equipment used for grading and handling seed potatoes must be cleaned, sanitized and inspected at least once a year.
  5. No bacterial ring rot may be found on the farming operation to qualify for Generation, Primary Foundation or Foundation status.
  6. The zero tolerance for bacterial ring rot means that no observed amount is allowed during inspection. The discovery of a single plant in the field or a single tuber in storage infected with bacterial ring rot shall cause rejection of the field or lot. The absence of a finding shall not be construed to mean that the field or lot inspected is free from the disease or disease causing agent.
  7. Certification requirements are not complete on any lot of seed potatoes until it has been properly graded, identified with official tags or official bulk certificates, and has passed official grade inspection.
  8. Final grading inspection and tagging is under the supervision of Federal-State inspectors and a certificate of inspection must accompany each shipment.

WINTER TEST
In order to help determine if any late season spread of certain virus diseases has occurred, all fields of Generation, Primary Foundation and Foundation class seed are sampled at harvest for additional testing during the winter.
Minnesota's winter test standards require that there be no more than one half of one percent of any or all virus diseases, and no spindle tuber or chemical damage detected in the sample.

LIMITED GENERATION CERTIFIED SEEDS
Limited Generation certified seed potatoes must originate from pathogen tested in vitro plantlets and may be replanted for certification only a limited number of years. The classification of a Limited Generation seed lot changes each year that it is in the field, going sequentially from Nuclear to Generation 1 through Generation 5.
Classification Sequence:
Generations
Disease tolerances
Disease tolerances
CONVENTIONAL CERTIFIED SEED
Conventional certified seed potatoes are initiated by clonal selection and the tuber unit technique on a primary foundation seed farm.
Seed produced from a tuber unit plot is classified as Primary Foundation 1.
The following year, Primary Foundation 1 seed is planted to produce Primary Foundation 2 seed.
The seed then leaves the primary foundation farm and goes to a foundation seed farm where it is increased as Foundation class seed.
Seed lots not meeting Primary Foundation or Foundation requirements are classified as Certified.
Disease tolerance