27 Feb Agronomy Update – Feb 27th

Posted at 14:14h in Uncategorized by

Thanks to everyone who came out this week to our Common Scab 101 AIM Winter Workshops.  Special thanks to Dr. Claudia Goyer and Dr. Rick Peters from AAFC who shared their research results and expertise on common scab with growers and industry partners.

Presentations from these workshops are now available on the Agronomy Site at https://peipotatoagronomy.com/seminar-workshop-presentations/.  Both PDFs and videos of each presentation are available.

In addition, videos of presentations at the PEI Potato Conference on February 12th are now available on the same page.  If you weren’t able to attend or wanted to check out a presentation you missed, you can now check out those presentations at your leisure.  Thanks to Bethany for helping get those videos edited and uploaded.

 

Use of Minuet to reduce common scab:

At our workshops this week, I shared results from our 2023 and 2024 field trials on using Minuet (an in-furrow biopesticide) to reduce common scab severity.  A full project report for 2024 is available here (PDF).

Across 5 fields in 2024, we saw no difference in total yield between treatment and control.  However, we did see a significant increase in percentage of 10 oz tubers in favour of the Minuet treatment.  Unmarketable scab percentage and marketable yield were heavily influence by one or five trials, so while there is a definite trend it isn’t statistically significant.

However, there was very strong significant differences between the Minuet treatment and the untreated control for reduction of percent scab per tuber as well as the percentage of black scurf from Rhizoctonia.

Across two years of research, where there was a noticeable amount of common scab symptoms (three trial fields) there was a 60-70% reduction in scab lesions in the Minuet treatment.

Minuet is labelled for suppression of Rhizoctonia, Pythium, and pink rot and Fusarium rot.

 

Next AIM Winter Workshops:

Our final AIM Winter Workshops for the winter are scheduled for March 19th and 20th.  The topic will be weed management and herbicide use, and our guest speaker will be Dr. Andy Robinson of NDSU.

Wed, Mar 19, 9:00 am:  Emerald Community Centre

Wed, Mar 19, 1:30 pm:  Elmsdale Community Centre (new venue)

Thu, Mar 20, 9:00 am:  Riverhouse Inn, Montague

Look forward to seeing growers and AIM industry partners there!