From planting, through plant protection, fertilising, harvesting, storage and processing, right up to trading and marketing – all links in the potato chain will be represented. The entire potato industry is presenting a comprehensive information show covering all aspects of the tuber. This makes it a magnetic attraction, especially for international trade visitors too.

PotatoEurope 2010 aims to show developments in machinery and equipment, as well as in potato breeding and processing, thus creating investment incentives. This will enable Germany as leading breeder nation to bring together all branches of the industry involved in the potato chain for an exchange of opinions and experience and to provide a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in machinery, equipment and installations.

PotatoEurope was premiered in Germany in 2006 at the initiative of UNIKA. “We should like to follow up the major success of 2006 and even surpass it in 2010”, explains Martin Umhau, Chairman of the Board of UNIKA.

Attractive accompanying programme

As co-organiser, UNIKA is contributing its expert competence to the event and organising specialist forums on the following topics:<s> </s>

• At the producer level, the subject “Potato production of the required quality” will be discussed under practical aspects.
• At the plant breeder level, a forum will address the thematic area “Innovative plant breeding in Germany”.
• Requirements made along the value chain will be shown and discussed in the forum “Quality assurance systems in the potato industry”.

Machinery and equipment will take up the largest block. Here quality production from planting to conditioning will be set out in three individual forums:

• The first forum will deal with “Quality production by optimising planting machinery and equipment”.
• The second machinery forum will discuss “Quality production by optimising the deployment of machinery and equipment in harvesting, ventilating and cooling technology”.
• Finally the third forum will explore “Conditioning potatoes for quality marketing”.

After hearing talks by experts from the various fields, visitors will have an opportunity to exchange ideas and form opinions in the subsequent discussion sessions. “The expert forums will bring new and perceptible momentum into the German potato market”, expects Umhau.

UNIKA as a strong industry association

The German potato industry association UNIKA unites all stages in the potato industry. It represents potato breeders, farmer producers, traders, packers and processors, as well as manufacturers of the relevant machinery and equipment and producers of the necessary farm inputs, in order to advance the potato industry together. The various UNIKA committees include many highly qualified, honorary members from all sections of the potato industry.

UNIKA’s goal is to boost the competitiveness of Germany’s potato sector. It creates a joint basis for this across interest groups and associations. With this concentration of skills and resources, it targets further improvement of the image of the potato with a view to not only stabilising but even increasing consumption in the long term.