News on Phytophthora from United Kingdom

The potatoes sector is to benefit from the delivery of seven industry projects funded by residual levy reserves, after a grant agreement was signed between AHDB and GB Potatoes.

Seed breeders work closely with potato growers to develop desirable agronomic traits, and with the wider supply chain for those crucial characteristics such as dry matter distribution, sugar formation, and storability.

Waitrose and Partners is set to be the first major retailer to sign up to The UK Robust Potato Pledge, which will see the group move away from the use of copper-based fungicides on organic fresh potatoes in order to combat late blight Phytophthora.

Plant scientists at the James Hutton Institute are studying the evolution of late blight in potato by working with industry and research partners to track the distribution and diversity of dominant clones in Europe in 2020

Gowan Crop Protection Limited, an affiliate of Gowan Co. LLC., has entered into agreements with Bayer AG to acquire rights to the active ingredients fenamidone and pencycuron.

Recent research at the James Hutton Institute suggests that limited genetic differences in potato lineages has left British and American spuds vulnerable to late blight, the disease that caused the Irish potato famine.

Late Blight control strategies in the United Kingdom will have to change this season if potato growers are to combat the spread of a new aggressive, fungicide-insensitive/ resistant strain of the disease, leading agronomy firm Hutchinsons says.

A genetically-modified (GM) Maris Piper designed to resist the devastating plant disease late blight has worked “brilliantly” during the first year of field trials, according to scientists of The Sainsbury Laboratory (TSL)

Potato industry representatives, growers and influencers from all over the UK and beyond are expected to descend on Dundee to take part in Potatoes in Practice 2017, a technical potato field event featuring a high-standard mix of science, technology and practical advice and the largest of its type in the UK.

In the United Kingdom, farming minster George Eustice (DEFRA) has approved a four-year trial of genetically modified (GM) potatoes at The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich.

A team of scientists from The Sainsbury Laboratory (TSL) and The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) have developed a new method to accelerate isolation of plant disease resistance genes and - using their new method - a brand new source of blight resistance genes in Solanum americanum, a wild relative of the potato.

Researchers in the United Kingdom aim for a new commercial potato that resists many of the worst vulnerabilities of potato crops around the world.

Potato growers and agronomists in he United Kingdom will be better prepared to cope with more aggressive blight strains this season, with a new BlightCast warning tailored to focus on infections now typically occurring earlier in the season at cooler temperatures.

Researchers at the Universities of Dundee and Aberdeen have made a breakthrough in understanding how the microbial spores which cause potato blight are so effective at infecting plants.

In Northern Ireland, the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute and CAFRE, Greenmount Campus has issued the first potato blight warning for 2014.

In the United Kingdom, many potato crops are now emerging well - straight into conditions that pose a high risk of blight.

This week , the potato variety Sarpo Mira was named Plant of the week in the British Newspaper "The Guardian"

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 ...