PRESQUE ISLE – Maine potato farmers are all but finished with this year’s harvest, and an official with the Maine Potato Board on Tuesday said the crop was superb.

“The weather conditions, I don’t know if we could have asked for much better,” said Donald Flannery, the board’s executive director. He added that the quality of the crop was “excellent.”

Classes in many school districts across Aroostook County resumed Tuesday, after being on recess for three weeks to allow students to help bring in the crop.

Maine farmers planted about 64,000 acres of potatoes this year, up from 62,000 last year.

Flannery said that based on reports he has received from farmers, the yield is inconsistent. Some farmers, he said, indicated that per-acre yield as equal or less than last year, while others reported just the opposite.

Maine’s average yield is 280 hundredweight per acre. Last year, that was down to 262 hundredweight. Flannery said he felt this year’s harvest would be somewhere in between.

About 60 percent of the state’s potato crop will go to processing for products such as french fries, potato chips and other prepared products. About 17 percent will go to table use, and 23 percent will be used for seed.

Seed farmers are still waiting to find out how U.S. and Canadian agriculture officials plan to deal with an outbreak of potato mop-top virus in several states this summer, including Maine.

The virus produces rings of discoloration inside potatoes, making them unmarketable. It is harmless to people. Its name is derived from the moplike appearance of the potato foliage that occurs in infected plants.

The virus was confirmed in August at the University of Maine Aroostook Research Farm in Presque Isle. A second case was found later in storage at a commercial operation elsewhere in Aroostook County.

Shortly thereafter, Canadian officials reported that they had found mop-top virus in 100 samples taken over an 18-month period from eight potato-producing states.

Flannery said officials with the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the Canadian Food Inspection Service met Tuesday in Washington, D.C., to discuss protocols for testing seed potatoes to determine the extent of the contamination and the steps that should be taken to control it in North America.

He said he expects that the agencies will agree that potatoes will be tested from each of the states that produce certified seed potatoes. The results of those tests will determine what other steps would have to be taken.

The testing would involve about 160 farmers in Maine.