News on Potato Defects and Diseases from Europe

With the threat posed to potato crops by nematodes, Polish growers are expected to welcome the announcement that Vydate®, a nematicide from DuPont that is already used to help maintain the quality and marketable yield of crops in the UK and the Netherlands.

The Austrian optical sorting equipment manufacturer Insort GmbH will highlight its Chemical Imaging Technology applied in their Sherlock Separator for the potato industry at the Interpom | Primeurs.

No sooner does the risk of importing exotic diseases such as dickeya in seed potatoes appear to be receding than another potential source of harm to the health of the UK crop has reared its head.

At the Public University of Navarra, David Gómez Castillo carried out research for his PhD on the possibility of substituting the current use of CIPC in potato storage by treating the tuber with essential oils of mint, caraway, coriander, eucalyptus an...

While recent rain should help boost protective soil intake by harvesters, the risk of potato bruising remains high, potato agronomists and machinery makers are warning.

Plant breeding business KWS marked its formal entry into potato breeding in the UK last week, with a demonstration of up-and-coming varieties and an outline of its key breeding objectives for the potato crop.

Researchers led by Professor Bruce Fitt, now at the University of Hertfordshire, have used modern DNA techniques on late nineteenth-century potatoes to show how the potato blight may have survived between cropping seasons after the Irish potato famine ...

Sustainable potato production across the EU could be under threat from potato cyst nematodes (PCN) and free living nematodes (FLN) without a comprehensive review of sampling and management options.

The increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere can have a positive influence on the potato yield. This is according to Anton Haverkort of Plant Research International, part of Wageningen UR, on 22 August during the bi-annual Potato Demo Day at Westmaas.

A group of campaigners in the Irish Republic has been refused a legal challenge over the first trial of a genetically modified potato crop. In July, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gave the go ahead for a gm blight-resistant potato crop to be tested in County Carlow.

The Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute and CAFRE, Greenmount Campus have issued a further potato blight warning.

With bacterial disease blackleg posing a threat to Scottish seed potato crops for a second consecutive season, there was advice at Potatoes in Practice on managing the risk of spread during haulm destruction.

Wet weather is once again favouring blackleg development in Scottish seed potato crops, although disease levels are believed currently to be below the record levels seen in 2011.

The application of oils has the potential to assist in the control of non-persistent viruses in potato seed crops. However, more work is required to establish the effects on seed crops.

In France, according to the UNPT, blight pressure remains strong and there are signs of early senesce in some crops.

A scheme to clear fields in Northern Ireland of potato wart disease has been hailed as a success.

Potato growers could achieve potential savings of more than €450/ha if they used a blight-resistant genetically modified (GM) potato variety instead of a conventional variety.

Ireland's environmental protection agency has approved the first trial of a genetically modified potato crop.