Delicious and versatile, Alturas potatoes are also highly popular with knowledgeable growers. This tuber rates as the fifth most commonly planted potato in Idaho – the state that produces more potatoes than any other. Alturas is suitable for processing, not only into frozen potato products – or dehydrated foods such as instant potato flakes – but also for fresh-pack sale in supermarkets, according to Richard G. Novy, based in Aberdeen, Idaho, about 200 miles southeast of Boise. Novy is a co-developer of the top-ranked tuber, along with Joseph J. Pavek, Dennis L. Corsini, Charles R. Brown, plus university co-investigators in Washington state, Idaho, and Oregon. After more than a decade of evaluations – including taste tests, trials in research fields, and experiments at potato-processing plants – the scientists decided to offer Alturas potato to growers in 2002. Their decision came after the tuber had, for example, met the exacting standards of taste-test panelists and had, in the outdoor trials, yielded more potatoes than the classic Russet Burbank – the “American Idol” of the potato world, against which all promising experimental potatoes are compared. Alturas has a light netting or russeting, which distinguishes russets from other potato types, on its light-tan skin, with white flesh inside. Researchers named Alturas for a prehistoric lake that once covered much of south-central Idaho.
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