Potato growers were told yesterday that they will have to adapt to new pesticide and environmental regulations while at the same time accepting yield reductions of up to 15%.
“The reality is that production cuts of that magnitude are possible,” said Rob Clayton, of the Potato Council, who was speaking at the annual Potatoes in Practice event at the Scottish Crop Research Institute’s Balruddery farm at Invergowrie.
“Many of the restrictions will come as the recent EU pesticides directive starts to bite and products start to lose approval.
“At least we are in a better position than we were a year ago. The Potato Council funded report from ADAS is now available and it shows considerable progress in terms of equipping growers with the knowledge that they will need if they are to cope with a reduced pesticide armoury.”
But it is not only the pesticide directive which is causing problems for growers, according to Mr Clayton. Agrochemicals up for review will also need to comply with the forthcoming EU water framework directive (WFD).
As an example he quoted Mancozeb, a long-established and commonly used fungicide which is the major contributor to many blight control strategies.
“It is due for renewal in 2015 and the application may fail, but we do not know if it will because, frustratingly, the pesticide directive criteria has not yet been defined. But now the product will also need to comply with WFD requirements. If Mancozeb is lost as a blight control material the ADAS report suggests that the national potato gross margin could drop by between 5-8%.
“As an industry we have to make sure we stop any further deterioration in water quality. From now on the key word is stewardship – it is essential for all of us.
“Growers often think they don’t have time to attend training courses. But they have to make time and if possible two people from each business should attend so that there is adequate cover. How you grow potatoes will change. It may be five or six years away but it will change and you have to be ready.”
There was certainly plenty of evidence at Balruddery yesterday that the potato industry is adapting for a challenging future with the 700 visitors from the UK and abroad able to see a host of variety plots with the emphasis on breeding in resistance to diseases and pests.
The holy grail for many breeders is to find a variety which will withstand attack from potato cyst nematode, or eelworm, particularly the persistent pallida species. The tiny soil born cysts already cost the UK industry £35million per year in control costs and crop losses. Without chemical nematicides this could soar to £55million, according to the ADAS report.
The key, according to SCRI chief executive Professor Peter Gregory, is to understand the potato genome and to use molecular markers to pinpoint the genes that confer resistance to eelworm attack. “We are making rapid progress on finding practical ways of selecting genes and we believe that we will speed up the process to the extent that we can produce resistant varieties within five or six years.” This compares with traditional selection methods where progress is measured in decades rather than years.
SCRI has also appointed a new potato breeder in succession to the recently retired John Bradshaw.
“We could see that it was going to be very difficult to find an experienced breeder because there are so few. So we have decided, as we did recently with cereals, to train our own breeder and Vanessa Young has now joined SCRI for an intensive five-year course which will include secondments with commercial breeders,” said Prof Gregory.