A FURTHER CASE of potato ring rot has been confirmed on a Lincolnshire farm, DEFRA has announced.

The Lincs farm took Sante seed potatoes for planting in 2003 from one of the same Dutch stocks supplied to the farm at the centre of the recent ring rot outbreak in Herefordshire. 

Farm saved seed was retained from the 2003 harvested crop and replanted in 2004 and the ring rot has now been detected in the 2004 crop.

The seed potatoes supplied to the farms in Herefordshire and Lincolnshire came from a Sante stock with a clonal link to stock implicated in a 2004 ring rot case in the Netherlands.

The results of sampling and testing from other farms involved with DEFRA‘s second phase of the investigation into the Herefordshire outbreak, involving the 2004 crop, have so far proved negative.

But some stocks still remain to be harvested and tested.

While investigations in both the UK and the Netherlands are still in progress, this finding increases the likelihood that the Sante seed potatoes received from the Netherlands in 2003, were a factor in both the Herefordshire outbreak and the Lincs outbreak.

As well as the Lincolnshire farm, the investigation programme is focusing on the outbreak farm in Herefordshire and farms in Norfolk, Newcastle and Suffolk.