It isn’t often I get a scoop but this one fell splat in the inbox. Russia - Moscow to be precise - has been chosen to host ‘Potato 2007‘.

Forget about the Olympics or the Eurovision Song Contest or the G8. Potato 2007 is a starch summit that’s as vital as any to Russia’s energy security.

The hard fact is that Russia is far from what most people imagine as Potato Central. It’s actually a huge importer of the nation’s staple diet.

Russian Potato Production. Not Exactly High-Tech.

If you caught Vilhelm Konnander’s last blog, you’ll appreciate that Russia may have won the space race after the war but it possibly lost the seed husbandry race in 1940. The efforts of the (then) world’s most advanced botanical institute were scuppered and sidelined by the regime as ‘bourgeois science’. Talk about knock on effects. Now even a miniscule country like Holland exports potatoes to Russia - principally its all-conquering ‘Bintje’ potato variety.

Interesting aside. The ‘Bintje‘ potato strain was developed by a Dutch schoolteacher and named after a pretty little girl called Bintje - his favourite student in the class. Today he probably would have been locked up on some paedophile charge but, since this happened in less paranoid times, ‘Bintje’ has gone on to become Europe’s preferred white potato. Mostly because she makes great chips.

And here’s another big problem for Russia. It imports potato chips from over 15 countries. When you sit down to a glass of Baltika and and a bag of nibbles in a Moscow bar, the potato element is most likely to come from Poland or Korea.

Russia is working on the problem, though. It is propagating niche strains of potato such as ‘Russian Blue’. Not in my supermarket yet but here’s a foretaste.

Texture: Mealy to Very Mealy
Uses: A top rated baking potato. Excellent for brightly colored salads.
Other: Very high in antioxidants, especially the skin. Keeps its color when cooked.

Currently, Russia is wondering about turning over its 3,5 million hectares of potato fields to GM crops. That old colorado beetle is still around. But the transgenic seeds for Russia will come courtesy of US Giant Monsanto, so this may be a political hot potato for Putin.

Anyway, all will be revealed at ‘Potato 2007′ in Moscow. See you there. (Just Kidding.)