An Experimental Cultivation Method Could Mean Healthy Potato Yield and Healthier Water

Fried, baked or mashed, we love our potatoes. What we don’t love is drinking water with lots of nitrate — a form of nitrogen that fuels a robust potato crop because it acts as a fertilizer. In the Central Sands area of Wisconsin, which is where most spuds are grown, drinking water is groundwater and groundwater can bear the brunt of unwelcome potato cultivation effects. Kevin Masarik, a researcher from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, is coming for those potatoes. He is armed with a one-row hand planter, and rye, millet and oat seeds. He’s got in mind science-based solutions, not potato-growing restrictions or even gastronomical intentions.

With two years of funding from the University of Wisconsin Water Resources Institute, Masarik is pursuing what he termed an outside-the-box idea for assessing whether this tasty tuber can be cultivated in a way that reduces the movement of nitrite into groundwater.