Potato growers will continue to benefit from a national blight monitoring scheme this season, as the James Hutton Institute successfully secured funding for one more year.

The Fight Against Blight (FAB) scheme alerts growers to new strains of the disease, which is especially vital this season with the UK under threat from a new fungicide-resistant strain that was seen for the first time in Ireland last year.

Up to 2022, FAB was funded by AHDB Potatoes and since its abolition, it has relied on short-term funding. The good news is that the institute, which runs the scheme, has successfully secured sponsorship from 18 different organisations.

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Dr David Cooke, who co-leads the work at The James Hutton Institute, highlights the importance of its work this year after the discovery of EU43 in Ireland last year.

The new genotype, which is also widely present in the Netherlands and Denmark, has resistance to oxysterol binding protein inhibitor (OSBPI) and carboxylic acid amide (CAA) fungicides.

He says that outbreak testing will act as an early warning system for EU43, along with any other new genotypes.

“The early detection of any new arrivals to GB crops is going to be crucial to building effective IPM [integrated pest management] programmes for 2024 potato crops.”

Early reports

This season’s wet weather and unharvested crops have created opportunities for late blight and the disease has already been reported in Jersey and Kent.

The scheme, which started in 2004, uses agronomists, growers and industry representatives, to submit up to 1,500 field samples from suspected late blight outbreaks.

Emerging threats and best practice for blight management are covered in an end of season report on the the FAB website, which has a record of all outbreaks since 2017.

Fight Against Blight sponsorship was provided by: Certis Belchim, UPL, BASF, Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta, Albert Bartlett, Agrovista, Frontier, GB Potatoes, Hutchinsons, McCain, Scottish Agronomy, The Seed Potato Organisation, Agrico, Branston, SAC Consulting and Agrii.