For 24 years, Doka Gene Technologies LLC (part of the DokaGin group of companies) has been breeding, developing and implementing new biotechnologies in practical potato seed production. Almost 7000 hectares of the company's land area are located in the Dmitrovsky and Klinsky districts of the Moscow region, about 1500 hectares are occupied by potatoes. In addition to potatoes, grain crops (mostly winter wheat), carrots and beets are grown here, and pea-oat mixtures and mixtures of cruciferous crops (radish and oil mustard) are sown on 2000 hectares to improve crop rotation.
News from the fields with the readers of the Potato System is shared by the chief agronomist of Doka-Gene Technologies LLC Mikhail Adzhigitov:
- Every year the planting is different, every spring is a separate test. Weather conditions are always decisive. This year we faced certain difficulties: the soil began to approach rather slowly. This happened against the background of low positive temperatures, and also due to too much snow in winter and the fact that it melted relatively quickly, a lot of water went into the soil. As a result of the prevailing intense wind regime, the top layer of the soil dried up: moisture was blown out from above, but it remained inside, the water was clogged there. We began to cut the soil and found it to be lumpy. Unfortunately, the peculiarity of this spring is not very high-quality cutting of the soil, due to too much moisture content inside.
On May 16-17, we had good rains, they soaked a large layer of soil, the moisture inside it closed up, and the soil began to be cut a little better. The moisture was distributed more evenly, and for some time it became easier to work the soil. But as the following days showed, all this had only a temporary effect.
Another of the difficulties of this season: the budget for the purchase of chemical plant protection products and fertilizers has significantly increased, and this despite the fact that we made orders back in November 2021. At the last moment, we had to replace a number of preparations from the line of chemical plant protection products altogether - none of the suppliers had original German preparations in stock. I think we will finalize this year without problems, and what will happen next year - time will tell.
As for planting potatoes. In previous years, we started planting potatoes on May 5-7. This year, May turned out to be quite cold, but we had the start of landing according to plan, on May 6th. We started with light sandy soils. And on May 16, they already “crossed the equator”, planted 767 hectares. In total, we need to plant 1523 hectares of potatoes. 4 shift teams work a day, we strive to plant 100 hectares each. True, after heavy rains, planting was slower, but even in such conditions we planted at least 50 hectares per day. We can say that everything is going well, according to plan. We don't have any problems. I think that we will complete the planting of potatoes in the optimal agrotechnical terms!
Last year, we planted seed and table potatoes in a ratio of 50:50. This year we are making a big bias towards seed potatoes. Therefore, the area of table potatoes has already remained a little more than 500 hectares, while the share of seed potatoes has increased to 1000 hectares. This is due to the situation on the market: seed potatoes are currently quite in demand and are sold very well in assortment. This year, a number of new varieties of Doka-Gennye Tekhnologii LLC's own selection appeared on the fields: Athletic, Grazio, Indigo Star, Milano, Oscar. The task is to multiply them and bring the required volumes to buyers.
The seed potato customer base of our company has expanded significantly. A lot of regions, including the southern ones - Krasnodar Territory, Rostov, Astrakhan Regions - come to us and buy our seeds, many customers are from central Russia. Almost all the potatoes that we had for sale, we sold. Next year, I think, there will be even more customers, since the varieties of our selection show very good results in various regions of Russia.
Ludmila Dulskaya