News on Potato Defects and Diseases from the United States

Wisconsin River Co-op recently announced that it has purchased Pest Pros Inc., an independent crop consulting firm and plant disease diagnostic laboratory located in Plainfield, Wisconsin. Pest Pros provides a range of crop management services to assi...

Much of Maine's seed potato supply for this year is infected with blight, and the state has asked the federal government for an emergency exemption to make an effective but expensive toxic seed treatment available to growers.

Volunteer potatoes in Michigan are surviving winters in increasing numbers, providing a bridge for late blight from one season to the next.

One year, it's the potato tuber worm;another year, it's the beet leafhopper.

Idaho potatoes are still at the discussion table five years after a potato cyst nematode outbreak threatened crops in Bonneville and Bingham counties.

Insecticide resistance management is not always on the minds of potato growers when faced with menacing crop pests, but straying from the recommended usage guidelines can eventually make the situation much worse.

President Obama's budget proposal for Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 proposes cutting $700 million in the USDA's spending levels.The amount represents a 3 percent cut from FY 2012 USDA spending levels.

New York State Agriculture Commissioner Darrel J. Aubertine today announced that the Department, in conjunction with USDA, is removing more than 300,000 acres from regulation for golden nematode.

Bayer CropScience today announced that Luna, the company's newest fungicide innovation, has received registration from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and is now available for sale, although Luna is not available in all States.

Thanks to investigations by scientists-turned-detectives with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other agencies, potato growers in the western United States and abroad now know the identities of the pathogen-insect duo responsible for outbre...

A worrisome tuber necrotic strain of Potato virus Y, called NTN, is now present in Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Montana, according to results of the 2011 Washington Commercial Seed Lot Trial.

In October, the University of Idaho College of Agricultural and Life Sciences confirmed that Idaho’s potato growers faced a new challenge to the state’s most famous crop with the arrival of Zebra chip.

A potato disease that arrived late this summer in the Pacific Northwest called zebra chip likely can't be spread by planting infected seed, new research suggests.

El Departamento de Agricultura de los Estados Unidos (USDA, por sus siglas en inglés), en colaboración con tres universidades más, ha lanzado recientemente un sitio web para difundir información relacionada con el virus Y (PVY) de la papa. Este sitio s...

The USDA, in cooperation with three major universities, recently launched a web site to disseminate information related to Potato Virus Y. This information will prove useful to all groups of people who need information about PVY, from potato growers, to scientists, to people working within the potato industry, to consumers of potatoes and potato products.

Zebra chip disease nearly destroyed a large USA potato growing business, its owner and chief executive told the Cambridge University Potato Growers Research Association conference earlier this month.

Idaho should consider a more stringent cap on the percentage of seed potatoes infected with potato virus Y that may be replanted for more seeds, an industry expert advised. The current cap is 2 percent. PVY is an aphid-spread disease that reduces both...

More than a decade has passed since Jim Tiede was among the growers caught up in a debacle over the first U.S. genetically modified potato variety. Even today, the American Falls, Idaho, farmer copes with the fallout of planting Monsanto's GM potato N...