Palma.The mild dry weather has meant that some of the sa Pobla potato farmers began the annual harvest yesterday with much of the crop bound for export to the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Germany, Holland and Belgium.
Farmers said yesterday that this has been an excellent winter for the Lady Christl variety and farmers are looking forward to a bumper crop with harvest due to continue until June.
Lady Christl seed potatoes produce very early oval tubers of a medium size with good size yields.
Lady Christl tubers are yellow skinned, with great tasting, creamy-to-waxy flesh.
They show good all-round disease resistance, in particular to common scab and potato cyst nematode, hence why they are a favourite variety for many of the sa Pobla growers.
But, the manager of Mateu Export in sa Pobla, Juan Mateu, was not getting too carried away yesterday.
He said that the past two harvests also started very well, but the weather deteriorated and come the end of the export season, complicated the process and damaged some of the late crop. A late freeze is what did most of the damage to last year's crop, so, as far Mateu is concerned it is early days but he agreed that the export season has got off to a good start with plenty of demand from the overseas markets.
Last year, 12.5 million kilos of potatoes were exported from Spain and 55 percent came from Majorca.
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