News on Potato Cultivation from the Americas

The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries of Jamaica is to conduct research trials on 15 new varieties of imported Irish potato over the next three months, to determine their suitability for local conditions.

In October JetBlue Airways, New York's Hometown Airline™ and TERRA® Real Vegetable Chips, part of The Hain Celestial Group, Inc., revealed the T5 Farm -- a blue potato farm and produce garden at Terminal 5 (T5) at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

The US Agency for International Development has awarded Michigan State University (MSU) a $5.8 million cooperative agreement to improve potato production in Bangladesh and Indonesia. Additional partners include the University of Minnesota and J.R. Simplot as well as in-country partners in both Bangladesh and Indonesia.

A PEI Potato Board survey last week revealed there were about 1,000 acres of potatoes left to be harvested across Prince Edward Island, mostly in central and western P.E.I.

The Plant Management Network provides information on how to improve efficacy of metam sodium application by shank injection in a new educational webcast developed by Neil C. Gudmestad

The potato harvest on Prince Edward Island is now underway and many farmers have installed security cameras in their fields and around machinery due to potato tampering concerns.

Alaskan potato farms with irrigation had a good year, but farms that didn't have irrigation lost much of their potato yield.

This year, potato yields should be slightly above average in the Canadian prairie provinces Manitoba and Alberta, but figures aren’t available because the harvest is only 10 to 15 percent complete.

In Mexico, Filiberto Cadena Payan, representative in Sinaloa of the Potato Product System, said that it was important for the state's producers to reduce their crop area to the 11,000 hectares allocated to this crop this year in order to continue obtaining the best possible results in the marketing of the potato crop.

Potato grower R.D. Offutt has agreed to scale back its expansion plans in Minnesota in a deal with regulators to protect sensitive groundwater and pine forests in central Minnesota.

Today, Black Gold Farms has started the harvest of its red potatoes in the Red River Valley

The J.R. Simplot Company is pleased that the USDA has deregulated the Russet Burbank variety of the second generation of Innate™ potatoes. Simplot is looking forward to the completion of the EPA registration and FDA consultation before the second generation of Innate™ potatoes can be introduced into the marketplace.

A new 'Focus on Potato' webcast titled “Managing Diseases with Biopesticides in Potato Production” helps growers, consultants, and other practitioners in the potato industry understand the basics of biopesticides and their use in the field.

The latest Focus on Potato webcast, titled “Best Management Tactics and Fungicide Resistance in Early Blight and Brown Spot” highlights the importance of measures to mitigate fungicide resistance, particularly when applied and repeatedly used on a single site.

Badger Common’Tater, a leading source of news, education and highlights of Wisconsin’s potato and vegetable industry is now available online.

Representatives from McCain Foods are excited about a new project under way in Aroostook County that has some farmers planting their usual acreage of potatoes right on top of a bed of winter rye, barley or oats.

Fresh-market potato growers in Washington and Oregon may not know what their 2015-16 crop will look like until they start harvesting, which should be a week or two earlier than usual.

Formagro, una empresa de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, especializada en imágenes satelitales, desarrolló un manejo diferencial según la aptitud de los suelos; lo está aplicando la multinacional McCain en el país y apunta a instalarlo en otras partes del mundo.