An official Polish governmental delegation visited the Quantum Tubers™ biotechnology research at the University of Wisconsin in Madison on May 7th 1998. The delegation was made up of the Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Advisor to the Minister, and the Undersecretary of State of the country of Poland, as well as the President of the Polish Grain Exchange and the Consul-Commercial from the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Chicago.

The visit of this official delegation was in anticipation of introduction of the Quantum Tubers™ pathogen-free potato minituber biomanufacturing facility which is scheduled to be placed into Poland early this year. Quantum Tubers™ is a division of American Ag-Tec International, Ltd.

The Quantum Tubers™ biotechnology is aimed at reconstituting Poland’s ailing potato industry by providing farmers with super high-quality, pathogen-free seed potatoes at a price equal to their currently disease-infected seed potato costs. The seed potatoes planted in Poland are currently burdened with a broad range of potato plant viruses, viroids and bacteria’s which hinder high rates of yield by farmers, and which even more significantly effect quality standards making the production of high quality potatoes very difficult. These factors have led to a decline in exports of raw potatoes from Poland in the past decade along with a lack of varieties suitable for chip and french fry manufacture. Polish farmers now feed more than 85% of their potato production to livestock for lack of markets for their low quality production.

Discussions were held with the Polish government leaders about the economic impact which this new technology will have on the Polish farmer. The plan calls for a seed grower network to be developed under the Quantum Tubers™ Poland business plan which will return more than $5,000,000 per year back to the Polish seed grower network of farmers. Additionally, production variety royalties in excess of $1,000,000 annually will be paid to the Polish Potato Institute for use of potato varieties developed by this agency and grown under the Quantum Tubers™ Poland project.

The Quantum Tubers™ method of biomanufacturing for pathogen-free potato minitubers has been developed by American Ag-Tec International, Ltd. of Delavan, WI with the assistance of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The UW-M departments participating in this revolutionary biotechnology development are the NASA Center (Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics) in the Department of Agricultural Engineering under direction of Dr. Ray Bula, as well as the Department of Plant Pathology - Chaired by Dr. Thomas German, who is also head of the Wisconsin Seed Potato Certification Program.