Minimising Scottish potato crop's growing pains

Every year, during the early summer about 100 trainee potato inspectors are to be found walking through numbered rows of plants in a large field on the outskirts of Edinburgh. At the end of their course at Gogarbank Farm outside the capital, the inspectors are able to identify at least 30 of the varieties they are likely to encounter when they later visit the seed potato fields of Perthshire, Angus, Aberdeenshire, Moray, the Black Isle, Caithness, the Lothians and the Borders to help in the fight against diseases in the vegetable. Each field is inspected at least twice. The July round of field inspections is one highly visible aspect of a scheme co-ordinated by Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture (Sasa) that protects against all the threats. The organisation mobilises the efforts of farmers, government scientists and inspectors and agronomists.