Sheep farmers in Eqaluit Iluat near Narsaq in southern Greenland are likely to harvest more than 70 tonnes of potatoes this year, reports Sermitsiaq.
Ferdinand and Ole Egede from Eqaluit Iluat employ eight workers to get potato harvest up, sometimes using their hands to dig the fragile Greenlandic potatoes up.
So far, this year they'd dug up 39 tonnes.
There is something in the Greenland soil which also prevent fungal diseases such as mold.
"We have found that there is mold present in the Greenland land of the same kind as in Denmark. We have also found bacteria that are not found in Danish soils, which seem particularly suited Greenland climate conditions and in the laboratory it's ben shown that excrete substances that inhibit mold. But we do not yet know exactly which substances in bacteria that inhibit fungi. It can also be the cold, which inhibits growth. Or a combination of the two things we are working to determine," microbiologist Peter Stougaard, lecturer at the Department of Agriculture and Ecology at the University of Copenhagen, told the Politiken newspaper last year.
"If we can identify a bacterium that is suitable to inhibit the growth of harmful fungi under low temperatures, it can open up for us to use it to protect potatoes grown in other cold regions, where it exists, For example, in Alaska, which is plagued by fungus. It can be done by seed treatment with bacteria before they submitted in the soil."
