Part article taken from The Vegetable Farmer, May 2017, written by Frances Wright.
In its May issue, The Vegetable Farmer spoke to some leading potato growers and agronomists to get their thoughts on the Hutton Criteria.
Agrovista agronomist John Ball sees the Hutton Criteria as a positive step forward and says they could be key to the future of the sector. He did not use Smith Periods, and draws attention to some of their limitations, reporting that he only received a 'couple of alerts' when blight was already in the crop.
As a result, he tends to use Plantsystems weather stations from Agrovista, that utilise disease prediction modelling to indicate blight pressure specific to the particular field, and these will help him make pinch points to compare with the Hutton Criteria. While he considers that Smith Periods were no longer fit for purpose, he finds the Hutton Criteria to be a positive step as it has more sophisticated systems which have been fine-tuned to UK blight strains.