Tests
The best promising varieties which come out of the breeding trials in many countries, including Greece, enter the second stage of testing, that of Positioning trials.
In this trial, 48 tubers (4 rows X 12 tubers) are manually planted from each variety. Agroline establishes many positioning trials (each of which includes 5-8 new varieties) in commercial potato fields of skilled farmers, who then take care of the crop.
Apart of these trials, an extra positioning trial with 15-30 new promising varieties is carried out every year and belongs to the extensive foreign trial schedule of HZPC.
With these trials we are able to get useful information about the adaptation and performance of the new varieties under different soil and climatic conditions. At the same time, the performance of the new varieties is compared with that of the commercial variety of the farmer.
In any case, the positioning trials are the initial stage of the commercial introduction of the new varieties in Greece.