News on Potato Defects and Diseases from the Americas

Health Canada and Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) have completed the food, feed, and environmental safety assessments of the J.R. Simplot Company’s second generation of Innate® potatoes. The authorizations enable the potatoes to be imported, planted, and sold in Canada.

Research of Boise State University plan to develop a wireless sensor network that would be able to detect temperature, humidity levels, carbon dioxide and ammonia levels in real time, to help with early detection of rot in stored potatoes.

Pressure from the tiny, winged insects that spread zebra chip disease in potatoes has been light in Idaho this season, emboldening some Idaho farmers to scale back on their pesticide programs.

Two recently released new Russet varieties - Castle Russet and Echo Russet - should help the potato industry in the Pacific Northwest cope with more stringent regulations on soil fumigants

UMaine scientists say farmers could try to protect their potato crop by utilizing agricultural practices — including crop rotations and push-pull strategies — to create field conditions that favor Colorado potato beetle cannibalism.

Colorado U.S. Senators Michael Bennet and Cory Gardner this week announced that Colorado State University will receive $264,600 in funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to study the spread of pathogens in U.S potato crops.

The Northwest Potato Research Consortium recently approved a combined $1.5 million in grant funding to 37 research projects.

The potato disease Dickeya can be detected by laboratory testing — but is there enough of it present to justify the higher costs? That is the question facing Canadian Seed Potato Growers exporting to the United States who are increasingly asked for the test.

Years before that french fry landed on your plate, the plant that would eventually give rise to the spud your fry was cut from was sealed away deep in a secure-access building, growing slowly in a test tube inside a locked growth chamber.

A partnership between Idaho State University and Boise State University has been awarded an Idaho Global Entrepreneurial Mission (IGEM) grant to research the application of the Humigator in potato storage.

The Texas A&M AgriLife Research plant pathology team intentionally infected potato plants with psyllids positive with the bacterium that causes zebra chip disease, in order to identify promising germplasm in the battle against the disease plaguing the US potato industry for the past 15 years.

Progress is being made eradicating the microscopic potato cyst nematodes that have been threatening Idaho’s $900 million potato industry the last decade, according to the latest update by USDA-APHIS.

The National Potato Council (NPC) has sent a letter to President Trump with suggestions how the NAFTA agreement can be improved to benefit the potato trade.

Powdery scab is a potato disease that is difficult to manage and under certain environmental conditions powdery scab can be potentially devastating to susceptible potato varieties.

With clean seed potatoes recognized as the best defense against this new blackleg-causing pathogen, the demand for Dickeya testing is growing fast.

The potato industry may be losing a mainstay in the battle against psyllids, according to a recent Texas A&M AgriLife Research study.

Gary Secor, consultor internacional y reconocido experto en el cultivo de la papa, se presentó recientemente en el marco del PDT Papas apoyado por CORFO en la Región de Los Lagos, y ejecutado por el Consorcio Papa Chile.

The US federal government has given the final OK to three more types of potatoes genetically engineered by Boise’s J.R. Simplot Co. to resist Phytophthora - the pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine.