Early Warning Systems for Sustainable Potato Late Blight Management: a World Potato Congress Webinar by Ivette Acuña

The World Potato Congress has presented the upcoming webinar: Implementation of an Early Warning System for Sustainable Preventative Management of Potato Late Blight. 

• Date: Wednesday, January 15, 2025 at 8:00am EST (USA/Toronto)
• Presenter: Ivette Acuña B. Agr. Eng. Ph.D.Phytopathologist, Agricultural Research Institute, INIA Chile

Summary: The potato is of social, economic, and cultural importance in Latin America, being the basis of food and the basis of the crop's biodiversity. Crop diseases are one of the major limiting factors in production, especially nowadays due to climate variability. Late blight is considered a re-emerging disease in this crop due to pathogen variability and climate instability that favours its presence and dispersion, with a high incidence and severity.

Farmers, therefore, sometimes use pesticides excessively and inappropriately, increasing the environmental impact and health risks to users. Therefore,having methodologies that allow us to carry out an intensive but sustainable production, allows us to ensure food for the population and at the same time preserve the environment and people's health. Early warning systems are useful tools to achieve this goal. 

This webinar will present the results obtained in a study carried out in 4 Latin American countries (Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and Panama) to validate early warning systems for the management of late blight and their implementation with small farmers, emphasizing the dissemination of knowledge and good agricultural practices. 

Presenter: Ivette Acuña B. is Agricultural Engineer from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Doctor of Philosophy in Plant Pathology from Montana State University, USA. She has worked as a researcher in plant pathology since 1988 at the Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias (INIA), Chile.

She has specialized in the integrated management of crop diseases, with emphasis on potato. During her professional career, she has focused on epidemiological studies and their applicability for the development and implementation of decision-support technologies that are easily accessible to all types of producers and that reduce the environmental impact and losses caused by sanitary problems.

She has led more than 45 projects related to potato diseases, integrated management, early warning systems and risk platforms, among others. Additionally, she has worked on the platform of potato diseases and the development and validation of an early warning system for late blight in Chile which today has more than 6700 registered users in Chile, many of which are part of small-scale agriculture. The system has been shown to reduce by more than 50% the applications of agro-chemicals needed to control the disease, thus reducing the environmental impact and the safety of people.

Today, she is working with women in Chiloé to implement the system in their crop management and the use of GAP. Ivette is an active member of 4 societies and 3 national and international scientific networks related to potato health. Today, she is the coordinator of the Latin American Network of cooperation for the study of late blight of Solanaceae (Latin blight), in charge of the thematic area of Plant Protection of the Latin American Potato Association(ALAP) and is the president of the Chilean Potato Association, ACHIPA.