The Jersey Royal is the marketing name of a type of

potato The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern Uni ...

grown in

Jersey Jersey ( , ; nrf, Jèrri, label= Jèrriais ), officially the Bailiwick of Jersey (french: Bailliage de Jersey, links=no; Jèrriais: ), is an island country and self-governing Crown Dependency near the coast of north-west France. It is the ...

which has a

Protected Designation of Origin The protected designation of origin (PDO) is a type of geographical indication of the European Union and the United Kingdom aimed at preserving the designations of origin of food-related products. The designation was created in 1992 and its main ...

. The potatoes are of the variety known as International Kidney and are typically grown as a new potato.

History

In around 1878 a Jersey farmer, Hugh de la Haye, showed friends a large potato that he had bought. It had 15 'eyes': points from which new plants sprout. They cut this potato into pieces, which they planted in a ''côtil'' (a steeply sloping field) above the Bellozanne valley. One plant produced kidney-shaped potatoes, with a paper-thin skin, which they called the ''Jersey Royal Fluke''. This was later shortened to 'Jersey Royal'.

Present day

In modern times, the Jersey Royal is Jersey's biggest crop export, accounting for around 70% of agricultural turnover. Ninety-nine percent of production is exported to the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

. In 2012, 28,600 tonnes of the potato, worth £28.6m, were exported from the island. This figure was down from 30,890 tonnes in 2011. Under the

Common Agricultural Policy The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the agricultural policy of the European Union. It implements a system of agricultural subsidies and other programmes. It was introduced in 1962 and has since then undergone several changes to reduce the ...

of the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...

Jersey Royals are covered by a

(PDO).Jersey Royal
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References

External links

Jersey Royal promotional site
{{Jersey topics Jersey culture Agriculture in Jersey British products with protected designation of origin Potato cultivars