Despite Prince Edward Island's position as Canada's top potato producer, the P.E.I. Potato Board says there needs to be more local research to help the industry, reported Canada East Times and Transcript.

Representatives from the board appeared before the standing committee on agriculture, environment, energy and forestry last week in Charlottetown to give a presentation on the state of the industry.

Mary Kay Sonier told the committee there have been cutbacks at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and while the provincial government has been good at funding projects there aren't enough researchers to work on them.

"The problem we're running in to is we need people to do those projects and we're running out of people to do them," she said.

Potato board general manager Greg Donald said the industry is important to P.E.I., but a lack of research leaves farmers at a competitive disadvantage.

"We're competing with places like Washington that have doubled the crop we have here so we have to continually look at how can we get bigger yield, lower cost," he said.