AF Root Crops

With potato crops making up for a slow start to the season, Farmers Guardian catches up with agronomists in the East and the South West for the latest agronomy advice.

Stewardship guidelines aimed at protecting workers hand-pulling bolters and weed beet from sugar beet crops were introduced by Bayer in 2018 with the intention of promoting product stewardship and operator safety.

Hutton Criteria disease warnings have been declared in key potato-growing areas.

McCain has pledged to implement regenerative agriculture practices across 100 per cent of its global potato acreage — representing 150,000 hectares by 2030.

As AHDB Potatoes begins to wind down activities following the ballot vote in March, it has announced the AHDB Market Intelligence provision of potato price information will cease in July.

Warmer temperatures are encouraging aphids to fly, and an increase in aphid numbers is now being widely reported and recorded across the British Beet Research Organisation’s (BBRO) yellow water pan network.

June will be a key month for the British potato crop. Across the country, development is late, but warm weather could transform the crop which now has plenty of access to water.

HSE has issued an emergency authorisation (EA) for the use of InSyst (acetamiprid) on sugar beet.

HSE has announced new Maximum Residue Levels (MRLs) to accommodate authorisations in Great Britain and to set an import tolerance to meet the requirements of international trade.

AHDB has launched a new database to enable growers to check the impact of synthetic chemical insecticides on natural enemies of the pests in crops.