News on Potato Defects and Diseases from Northern America

Potato Growers on Prince Edward Island report they are planting more mustard than ever this year.

Idaho potato fields looked good as of early July as plants closed in over rows, signaling the tubers are preparing to grow strongly amid the hot-day, cool-night march toward harvest.

Jean Ristaino, a professor at North Carolina State University with emphasis in research on Phytophthora infestans, reported on a late blight look-alike from tomato and potato in North Carolina.

Potato growers in Idaho will now have the opportunity to learn about the presence of damaging fungal pathogens much earlier, thanks to the efforts of research staff at the University of Idaho. The research team, led by James Woodhall, has placed 14 spore samplers in potato fields across the Snake River Valley.

El Centro Internacional de la Papa (CIP) fue galardonado por desarrollar métodos de aprendizaje basados en el descubrimiento de los agricultores, en Bangladesh, China, Etiopía, Uganda, Bolivia, Ecuador y Perú.

A federal judge ruled that the United States government illegally quarantined some Idaho potato fields infested with potato cyst nematodes (PCN), a pest that could threaten the state’s $1.2 billion potato industry.

Benjamin 'Benjy' Firester, 18, of New York City, won the top award in the Regeneron Science Talent Search 2018 with a mathematical model that uses disease data to predict how weather patterns could spread late blight spores.

Terrence McEachern of the Guardian spoke with Romana Roberts and Chris Hunt of PEI Potato Solutions on the Sherlock Separator they recently installed for the removal of foreign objects and defects, such as surface scabs or rot.

The Colorado potato beetle is notorious for its role in starting the pesticide industry - and for its ability to resist the insecticides developed to stop it. Now scientists have sequenced the beetle’s genome, probing its genes for clues to its surprising adaptability.

The Government of Canada supports the investment in a Sherlock Separator potato sorter by RWL Holdings LTD (PEI Potato Solutions), a potato washing and sorting facility to optimize potatoes for processing prior to delivery to Cavendish Farms.

When some Colombian potato varieties are lightly grazed by a pest, the plants respond by growing larger tubers, at times doubling their yields. Researchers see an opportunity and want to know more...

Chemicals in the leaves of potato plants, produced naturally by the plant, may hold the key to a new way to control Colorado potato beetles - a major pest for potato growers.

Certis USA has entered into an agreement with Corpoica, the Colombian Corporation for Agriculture Research, to license Corpoica’s Spodoptera frugiperda nucleopolyhedrovirus (SfMNPV) strain NPV003 and formulation technology for a biopesticide against the fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda).

The USDA-NIFA has awarded a grant totaling $388,000 to the University of Maine to study potato breeding and improve quality and pest resistance in the eastern United States.

Researchers from all over the world were in Bangor for the '2017 Dickeya and Pectobacterium Summit', organized by the University of Maine Extension.

For the first time, evidence of the zebra chip pathogen has been found in potato fields in southern Alberta, but the University of Lethbridge’s Dr. Dan Johnson cautions against panic.

A project underway in Aberdeen, Idaho, aims to develop russet potatoes with resistance to pale cyst nematode, while identifying new molecular markers associated with resistance.

In a visit to the Nematode Quarantine laboratory at Cornell University last Friday, US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, announced a commitment of $400,000 from the USDA for the upgrades to the facilities and equipment.