Award Winning SAC Student Answers Questions on pit rot of Potatoes

SAC 1st Class Honours graduate, Amanda MacLennan, from the Black Isle used the recent Potatoes In Practice Event near Dundee to present the results of her research into Pit rot of potatoes.

It is a disease capable of causing extensive damage to stored tubers and is linked to Blackleg, another threat to the Scottish potato crop. Amanda carried out the work as part of her honours degree dissertation. 

Her project comes at a time when Scottish growers have reported an increase in Pit rot which causes distinctive pitting on the surface of tubers during storage. As it is caused, by the same bacteria Pectobacterium atrosepticum, which causes Blackleg, there is concern that planting seed with Pit rot may lead to an increase of both diseases.

In her field trial, at SAC’s Craibstone Campus, Aberdeen, Amanda wanted to know how level of Pit rot on seed might effect crop and disease development. She found planting seed with Pit rot had no effect on crop yield or Blackleg development, compared with healthy seed. After harvesting the crop was kept in a cold store and symptoms of Pit rot developed after Christmas. However the level of disease found in the store was not directly related to the amount of infection in the planted seed. This suggests that the practice of grading out seed tubers with Pit rot, before planting may not prevent a subsequent problem.

Symptoms of Pit rot can look like other potato diseases, in particular Gangrene. During the course of her work she performed a number of laboratory tests to confirm that symptoms on tubers were caused by P. atrosepticum. 

Amanda presented the results of her work, alongside other researchers,  to growers attending the Potatoes in Practice event at Balruddery farm, near Dundee. Her project supervisor, Dr Alex Hilton, from SAC Life Science Teaching Group, in Aberdeen, commented: ‘This is an excellent piece of work and is a good example of the type of projects our honours students are performing. The industry needs graduates who have a scientific background and can apply this knowledge to the practical challenges which the industry is facing. The research project is an excellent tool to develop these skills’.
 

Amanda who is originally from an arable and pig farm, near Fortrose, graduated from SAC in July 8th. She is a former pupil of Culbokie Primary school and Fortrose Academy and is the daughter of Alastair &Deirdre Maclennan, Feddon Hill, Fortrose. At the graduation ceremony in Glasgow University she also received The Worshipful Company of Woolmen Prize, for the best honours dissertation in Agriculture and the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society Medal and SAC prize for best 4th year student.

Over the summer, Amanda, has been working as an inspector for the Scottish Government Environment and Rural Affairs, as part of the Scottish Seed Potato Classification Scheme. It is her intention to return to study for a Masters degree in Land Economy at the University of Aberdeen. She is hopping to pursue a career in the Potato Industry.