Article taken from The Scottish Farmer, written by Ken Fletcher
The prospect of moving much of Scotland’s pre-basic seed potato growing ‘indoors’ has been mooted as a possible way to enhance our reputation for producing high health seedstock for export, writes Ken Fletcher.
That was the radical proposal of Agrovista consultant, Andy Steven, when addressed last week’s SAC Consulting Association of Potato Producers at its annual meeting in Perth.
He argued that though growing high quality seed in the likes of polytunnels would be an expensive exercise, it would automatically preserve the integrity of Scotland’s seed industry at a time when climate change was thought to be impacting on our ability to produce clean seed.
Pointing out that the industry faced many challenges, he said: “We’re going to have to change the way we operate. We are going to lose important agchem products and the big game changers which will allow us to compete are going to be harder to find and less frequent than we’ve been used to.”
One of those game changers, he said, was to take much of the disease risk factor out of growing pre-basic seed by adopting polytunnels technology which has, in the past 20 years, become commonplace in the fruit industry.
While many would regard the cost of such an approach prohibitive – at around £15,000 per ha, he reckoned – the lower disease levels, earlier planting and the associated yield benefits being passed on to G1 and G2 crops, would go a long way to mitigating the cost. One grower, he said, was considering such a trial this coming season.
On the face of it such costs do not look appealing, he admitted, but pointed out that once seed had been taken to fifth generation, it worked out a just 50p per tonne with the first generation produced in polytunnels. Taking two generations through the polytunnels process would add just £3 per tonne by fifth generation seed, he said.
A key factor on the industry going down this route, was that pyrethroids used in the battle against disease bearing aphids now have significant resistance against them and tougher EU regulation meant many could be lost form growers’ armoury.
This could force growers to reduce aphid risk by taking the crop into a controlled environment, he argued.
The prospect of moving much of Scotland’s pre-basic seed potato growing ‘indoors’ has been mooted as a possible way to enhance our reputation for producing high health seedstock for export, writes Ken Fletcher.
That was the radical proposal of Agrovista consultant, Andy Steven, when addressed last week’s SAC Consulting Association of Potato Producers at its annual meeting in Perth.
He argued that though growing high quality seed in the likes of polytunnels would be an expensive exercise, it would automatically preserve the integrity of Scotland’s seed industry at a time when climate change was thought to be impacting on our ability to produce clean seed.
Pointing out that the industry faced many challenges, he said: “We’re going to have to change the way we operate. We are going to lose important agchem products and the big game changers which will allow us to compete are going to be harder to find and less frequent than we’ve been used to.”
One of those game changers, he said, was to take much of the disease risk factor out of growing pre-basic seed by adopting polytunnels technology which has, in the past 20 years, become commonplace in the fruit industry.
While many would regard the cost of such an approach prohibitive – at around £15,000 per ha, he reckoned – the lower disease levels, earlier planting and the associated yield benefits being passed on to G1 and G2 crops, would go a long way to mitigating the cost. One grower, he said, was considering such a trial this coming season.
On the face of it such costs do not look appealing, he admitted, but pointed out that once seed had been taken to fifth generation, it worked out a just 50p per tonne with the first generation produced in polytunnels. Taking two generations through the polytunnels process would add just £3 per tonne by fifth generation seed, he said.
A key factor on the industry going down this route, was that pyrethroids used in the battle against disease bearing aphids now have significant resistance against them and tougher EU regulation meant many could be lost form growers’ armoury.
This could force growers to reduce aphid risk by taking the crop into a controlled environment, he argued.