ORIGIN: The variety Valfi was bred by Potato Research Institute Havlíčkův Brod, Ltd. as a clonal selection from British Columbia Blue. In the Czech Republic, Valfi was registered in 2005. In that year it was awarded by the main prize Golden Ear during the international agricultural fair Bread Basket. Community Plant Variety Rights (Council Regulation (EC) No. 2100/94) were granted to the variety.
TUBER DESCRIPTION: Tubers are oval, medium large to large with medium deep eyes, with blue-violet skin and blue-violet marbled flesh.
AGRONOMIC CHARACTERS: Valfi is medium early to medium late variety for special use, cooking type BC. It is an extraordinary variety, not only due to skin and flesh colour, but also due to specific internal quality of ware tubers. It is suitable for preparation of naturally coloured mashed potatoes, salads, fried chips and crisps. The variety is medium resistant to mechanical damage, medium to less resistant to common scab and susceptible to foliage blight.
GROWER TIPS: Considering lower resistance to foliage blight infection great care is required in late blight management, especially in the latter half of the growing period, which is not possible without fungicide applications. Growing this variety is not suitable on plots with presence of potato common scab.
SPECIFICITIES: The variety Valfi is a source of anthocyanin pigments, expressing antioxidant activity. During the growing period at tuber formation content of anthocyanins is constant, at the beginning of growing period anthocyanins are more concentrated in tuber stem-end, at maturity content is uniformly distributed in the whole tuber. Low storage temperature (4 °C) induces increase of anthocyanins. Toward the end of storage period anthocyanins are concentrated rather in bud end.