News on Energy and Environment from Ireland

El clima sigue siendo atípico en Europa y productores de todas partes se preocupan por el futuro. Irlanda no es la excepción.

The World Potato Congress (WPC) Inc., through its mission of creating value chain networking within the global potato community, has officially adopted the Declaration of Dublin: Fostering Potato Partnerships for Food Security.

Potatoes could make a greater contribution to global food security, according to the director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations (UN).

Consumed by more than a billion people worldwide, including many of the world’s poorest, potato has long been one of the most important crops to avert hunger.

The Irish Minister for Agriculture Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, officially opened the 11th World Potato Congress at the RDS in Dublin.

The World Potato Congress is very pleased to present its second 2022 webinar on February 25 at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Standard time (USA/Canada). Potato is often considered synonymous with Ireland due to the great Irish Famine and still remains the most important food crop in Ireland.

The call for abstract submission for WPC 2022 is now open and authors are encouraged to submit their abstract online for consideration. Deadline for Oral Submissions: 30th November 2021. Deadline for Poster Submission: 15th February 2022.

Smaller pack sizes and new packaging formats that allow potatoes to be microwaved for convenience, are among the industry trends being embraced by K&K Produce, which is based in Fingal, Co. Dublin.

Tesco has become the first retailer in Ireland to make its packaging for 1kg new season potatoes fully recyclable while also reducing the amount of paper used in its 2.5kg potato packaging.

Irish potato grower and packer Meade Potato Company has entered the starch commodity market by extracting starch from surplus potatoes and potato processing by-products.

Freezing temperatures around Ireland over the past week has damaged many early potato crops.

The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) estimates that 5% of the potato crop across the country remains in the ground. That said some farmers have a lot more acres remaining than others, depending on the weather they were greeted with in the past few months.

Several dozen organic farmers have been protesting outside Department of Agriculture offices in Athenry, Co Galway (Ireland) over delayed farm payments

Irish Research Institute Teagasc hopes to begin planting out more than 5,000 potato plants in the next two weeks, in the second phase of its study into the environmental impact of blight-resistant genetically modified (GM) potatoes.

A group of campaigners in the Irish Republic has been refused a legal challenge over the first trial of a genetically modified potato crop. In July, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gave the go ahead for a gm blight-resistant potato crop to be tested in County Carlow.

What sort of bounty could possibly lie in piles of discarded potato peelings?“We have been interested in by-products for quite a while now,” says Dr Nigel Brunton, a senior research officer with Teagasc who works with phytochemicals derived from plants...