‘Microbes determine the vitality of the potato crop in and around the tuber’

If you want to say something about the vitality of seed potatoes, you shouldn’t look at the substances, but at the micro-life in and around the tuber. At least, that’s the opinion of Roeland Berendsen, researcher at Utrecht University. Together with his colleagues, he’s developed a model that demonstrates the correlation. The next step is to zoom in on the variety differences and find out which bacteria and fungi play a major role.