5675: Management of plant diseases in organic seed potato production [Kasvitautien hallintakeinot luomuperunan siementuotannossa]

{PROJECT} Management of plant diseases in organic seed potato production [Kasvitautien hallintakeinot luomuperunan siementuotannossa]. Runs 01 January 2003 - 30 December 2005. Project leader(s): Hannukkala, Asko, MTT Agrifood Research Finland. More information online at <http://tripunix.mtt.fi/cgi-bin/thw/?${BASE}=arktui&${HTML}=docu_eng&${SNHTML}=nosyn_eng&${TRIPSHOW}=for=www_eng&NR=151-02>.

Summary

The biggest difference between organic and conventional seed potato production is that the use of fungicides against potato late blight and seed borne diseases are forbidden in organic farming. The quarantine diseases such as bacterial ring rots and diseases limited in certified seed, like Erwinia soft rots are a serious threat to organic seed potato production. However the management strategies against these diseases are similar in both organic and conventional production. At the present only one producer in Finland is growing certified organic seed potato. Due to problems in plant protection there has not been enough courage among farmers to specialise organic seed potato production. The aim of current study is to develop crop management strategies for organic seed potato production with a special emphasise to potato late blight and Rhizoctonia diseases to provide sustainable certified seed potato production to fulfil the demand by organic potato growers. The most important research areas and tasks are: 1. The effect of cropping history and crop rotations to late blight epidemics and occurrence of Rhizoctonia black scurf 2. The importance of seed potato as primary inoculum source for potato late blight 3. The relative importance of composts, waste piles and volunteer plants as a source of primary inoculum for potato late blight 4. The possibilities to reduce disease pressure and tuber infection by increasing air flow in crop by decreasing crop density and row distance 5. Also the efficacy of defoliation to reduce tuber blight is studied. 6. Possible alternatives for synthetic chemicals to control late blight and black scurf.

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