Tubers have battled various scourges for about 10,000 years, as well as an unpredictable climate that can cause unseasonable frost damage to crops every year.

As of November 12, 2019 seed potatoes from Montana and Colorado can be used in the Pacific Northwest chipping and tablestock export programs for South Korea.

A research team has identified a virus infecting Phytophthora infestans, the pathogen causing late blight in potatoes and tomatoes, that appears to increase the pathogen's ability to cause the disease.

Ongoing studies at the University of Idaho’s Aberdeen Research & Extension Center seek to help seed potato growers avoid a chronically troublesome disease spread by aphids, called potato virus Y, writes John O’Connell in the Idaho State Journal.

Aphids and the plant viruses they transmit cause billions of dollars in crop damage around the world every year.

ARS Researchers studied potato tubers from the Klamath Basin in Oregon infected with the causal bacteria of zebra chip disease. They confirmed the presence of the pathogen but did not identify the sample as one of the six known varieties (haplotypes).