It may lack the broad appeal of an Idaho russet potato, but the University of Minnesota’s recently released Paisley Purple potato has gained an avid following among some consumers and even restaurateurs. It’s not yet widely available — similar to the University’s newly created North Star Apple Crisp ice cream (to honor its 175th anniversary) — but fans of the tuber will find a way.
The potato was first created by Christian Thill, who ran the University’s potato lab until he died unexpectedly about a decade ago. Thill and his group were excited about the purple potato because it keeps its color when cooked and it makes nice purple potato chips.
When Laura Shannon arrived at the University of Minnesota in 2017 and took over the potato breeding program, she inherited Thill’s samples. Despite having scant information on the variety, Shannon decided to continue with its breeding,
In talking with potato growers around the state, she found that some were interested in Thill’s potato, but “they didn’t really want to grow it … they wanted to eat it,” says Shannon, an associate professor in the Department of Horticultural Science. “We have been trying to build a production pipeline, and we think that its future is probably with organic farmers [for farmers markets] and local restaurants.”
Close to a decade after Shannon arrived, Paisley Purple started appearing around the Twin Cities. It has been enthusiastically served by Alma restaurant and its chef Maggie Whelan near the Twin Cities campus in Minneapolis, and is farmed by Tha Cha and his sister in Rosemount and the Student Organic Farm on the St. Paul campus. It was also grown at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum this year.
What’s in a name
When it came to choosing a name, Shannon followed a convention of breeders naming their potatoes after the state they’re from. For example, Cornell University’s breeders named two of their potatoes Lamoka and Waneta after lakes in the Finger Lakes region of northern New York.
“I was trying to think about what a very Minnesota name would be,” Shannon says. Settling on the theme of Prince, she thought about choosing Purple Rain, but that was already taken by breeders in Europe, who must also be fans of our state’s most famous musician not to have attended the University of Minnesota.
And so it became Paisley Purple — a fitting moniker given its deep, rich purple with yellowish swirls and streaks. Paisley Purple potatoes tend to be smaller than conventional potatoes. When they’re really small, they tend to be solid purple, and when they’re larger, they’re often purple and white, Shannon says. A bonus is that they retain their color even after they’re cooked.
While she’s resigned to the fact that Paisley Purple is likely never going to become a global giant like the Honeycrisp in the apple world, she notes that potato breeding is similar to apple breeding, and that can be convenient for describing what she does — “because everyone in Minnesota knows about Honeycrisp and how that came about.” She jokes that she can say it’s “like Honeycrisp, but for potatoes.”
Shannon says that if people are looking for Paisley Purple yet this fall, the best bets are the St. Paul Farmers Market or the Student Organic Farm market.
A potato to be named later
Just as in apple breeding, there are always many possibilities in the pipeline for commercially successful potatoes; Shannon notes that about 20,000 varieties are tested in the University’s potato breeding program in a given year.
She’s excited about one in particular — a round, yellow, dense and high-yielding potato that’s also bruise-resistant and, importantly for breeders, disease-resistant. It holds up well in soups, and a friend of hers who is a chef at George & the Dragon in South Minneapolis used some to create sample french fries. At this early stage, it’s known not-so-simply as MN19AF6945-003, but someday soon it may too have a name, musician-related or not.
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