UK: East of England Potato Day 2013
Opening the event, Potato Council’s director Rob Clayton, urged attendees to talk to board members as part of Potato Council’s ‘Direction Through Dialogue’ process (www.potato.org.uk/dtd).
“Direction Through Dialogue is the good, the bad, and the ugly exercise. We’ve already had feedback covering 45% of the GB area and 70% of the volume traded. This gives a real sense of what industry wants and will result in sharpened, improved and reshaped services. But there’s still a month to go and now’s the opportunity to put forward your views,” explained Rob.
Adrian Briddon
Kicking off the presentation sessions, Potato Council’s, Adrian Briddon from Sutton Bridge Crop Storage Research, described lessons learnt from CIPC exceedances and how to achieve best practice for the 2013 season. “CIPC labels are changing, we know that the maximum total dose rate per season, will be reduced to 36g/tonne,” explained Adrian.
The new, ‘Be CIPC Compliant’ campaign (www.cipccompliant.co.uk) promotes best practice and raises awareness of the issues surrounding CIPC use. The aim is to reduce the levels of residue found on crops, to safeguard its availability for future use. “It’s vital to get CIPC on early,” urged Adrian. “It needs to be within three weeks of harvest. This gives the best chance of controlling sprout growth with the least amount of CIPC. For cold stores with a holding temperature of 5C° or below, only one application should be used for the whole season.”
During the fields sessions attendees visited machinery displays by George Moate, Grimme and Standen and saw a working demonstration of a new vision system, which is part of a LINK project co-funded by Potato Council. The machine can control potato volunteers in carrots, onions and leek crops.
Trial plots with the leading varieties and new developments available from Branston, Caithness, Cygnet, Fenmarc, Greenvale, Grampian Growers, IPM and KWS were a popular aspect of the day.
During the field site session David Hudson Potato Services Ltd demonstrated fertiliser application methods and timing; Barworth Agriculture and Branston showed their Biofumigation and trap crop trials; Syngenta demonstrated different defoliation and seed treatments; and Bayer, Frontier and Hutchinsons evaluated in-furrow treatments.
Potato Council would like to thank Frederick Hiam Ltd for hosting the event. Nick Gilford, commercial director said “It was great to see so many of our customers and suppliers, and also to catch up on the latest technical developments. We really enjoyed hosting the event and our business is committed to doing so again in September 2014.”
For more information:
Jim Davies
Potato Council
Tel: 0044 24 7647 8786
Mob: 0044 7581 628819
www.potato.org.uk