News on Potato Defects and Diseases from Northern America

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.

More than 300 people stopped by Fredericton Research and Development Centre's open house

Idaho Potato industry officials report yields are down significantly as Western Idaho growers have started with their early harvest of Russet Norkotahs for the fresh market.

Adrienne Gorny, a fourth-year doctoral student in Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology at Cornell University, is the recipient of the 2017-2018 NPC Academic Scholarship.

The National Potato Council, representing the United States Potato Industry responds to the Mexican Court decision to block the import of US potatoes: 'Mexican Court Ruling Ignores Science'

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed two new measures involving the potato industry last Wednesday. One law makes use of certified seed potatoes mandatory, the other enforces a faster response to the presence of late blight

Health Canada and Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) have completed the food, feed, and environmental safety assessments of the J.R. Simplot Company’s second generation of Innate® potatoes. The authorizations enable the potatoes to be imported, planted, and sold in Canada.