Recent Events

First up was Potatoes in Practice, where PCN Action Scotland was both on display and a talking point in the seminar tent. Philip Burgess spoke to an audience in the seminar tent about the project as a whole and what has been occurring within the Knowledge Exchange work package especially. Other members of the Knowledge Exchange work package represented the project at an agronomy plot where eight Globodera pallida resistant varieties were planted. This was a good talking point as resistant varieties are a powerful tool for PCN control especially when used as part of an integrated pest management approach. Knowledge Exchange outputs such as factsheets and the grower story were picked up by many, and lots of people dropped in to find out more and discuss PCN.

PCN Action Scotland held an open day at Barnyards Farm in Angus by kind permission of Neill Smith. The weather stayed dry and over 100 people turned out to see the Scottish Agronomy-run variety trials and hear from project members about some of the PCN-related work occurring in Scotland right now. In both the morning and afternoon sessions, James Price (James Hutton Institute) explained the differences between tolerance and resistance to PCN and were then guided through the 12 resistant and partially resistant variety plots by Phil Burgess (scottishpotatoes.org) and Eric Anderson (Scottish Agronomy). Eric and Martin Cessford (Angus Horticulture) discussed chitinous soil amendment and Jim Wilson (SoilEssentials) concluded by talking through the groundkeeper control work he is doing in the project and PCN soil sampling. We hope to have a follow up meeting early next year to discuss the results of the trial and other ongoing work within the project.

PCN Action Scotland at PiP