Golden birch trees marked the edge of Greg Kalal's fields, but the dentist-turned-farmer was more interested in hues beneath the soil on his land south of Mount McKinley.

Among the thousands of colorful potatoes - from yellow German Butterballs to Magic Mollys with flesh so purple it's nearly black - is a half-row of red potatoes with yellow flesh that University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers believe could become a popular and profitable niche product in a state not known for its agriculture.

University officials are pursuing their first plant patent on the unnamed potato that they hope will earn licensing fees from growers, reported OfficialWire.

The potato could serve a niche demand for specialty potatoes, meeting a need for locally grown food and offering revenue to farmers such as Kalal

Carol Lewis, the university's dean of agriculture sciences, described the development as, "Something that's appealing to the chef, that's appealing to the public, possibly, and hopefully, appealing to a buyer, and then appealing to the grower, that also yields well and performs in general well in our short seasons."