January 29, 2024 | Articles

Rhizoctonia

In December last year – among other countries – Wageningen colleagues and I visited India and were confronted with – for me that is – almost unprecedented occurrence of black scurf causing considerable damage to potato crops. In Punjab the seed potato state in North-Western India we were shown fields with foliar symptoms as shown…

January 25, 2024 | Articles

Conferences

To find out what is new in potato research attending the 19^th triennial conference of the European Association of Potato Research (EAPR) in Brussels and the 98^th annual meeting of Potato Association of America (PAA) in Spokane both in July this year is most helpful.

January 24, 2024 | Articles

Enigma

Myanmar, Mozambique and Burundi: just three examples of countries where potato plays a slowly increasing role to feed the population. India, Rwanda and Kenya, just three examples where the potato plays a substantial role in feeding the needy millions.

December 16, 2015 | Articles

Future

When the Spanish conquerors reached the Andes early in the sixteenth century the Incas grew potatoes for many thousands of years. No one then could have imagined that three hundred years later the crop would have become the most important food crop in northern Europe. Even less that a single disease, late blight would have…

September 16, 2015 | Articles

Brownrot

Recently I needed to calculate the losses in global potato production due to late blight caused by the oomycete Phytophthora infestans. I reviewed many articles that reported estimates of losses due to this disease in crops e.g. between 6 and 40 % in Romania, 23 % in Poland, up to 40 % in Burundi, 38-65…

June 17, 2015 | Articles

Micros

A caterpillar becomes a butterfly. Once people did not even know it was about the same individual. These are only two appearances of the butterfly. A butterfly also lays eggs that when hatched deliver the caterpillars that replaces its skin a few times to allow it to grow. Towards winter they weave a web –…

March 11, 2015 | Articles

Dilemma

A commodity is a product, be it from anorganic source such as iron ore or organic such as wheat, that is interchangeable and homogeneous and of which its origin does not matter. Fresh potato sold in shops, markets and supermarkets when harvested and traded in bulk generally is considered as such a commodity.