Work Package 1 - Economics

This work package is being led by Steven Thomson (SRUC)

Scotland's potato industry is worth £250million to the economy and employs over 2000 people. 

Aim

To investigate the financial consequences of PCN in Scotland through a detailed economic impact assessment.

Action

Data will be gathered to develop economic profiles of the Scottish seed and ware potato sectors. A model will be developed, using data on potential PCN spread and control options, to estimate the economic costs and benefits of different PCN assumptions on the Scottish potato sector. This WP will be used as a source of information for the DSS (WP 2) and work with WP 8 (Knowledge Exchange) to provide an assessment on implementing PCN control.

For more information about WP 1, please contact: steven.thomson@sruc.ac.uk

Publications

Work Package 1 - Economics, Work Package 8 - Knowledge Exchange and Communications, Work Package 9 - Policy | Final Report and Policy Document

The Estimated Economic Contribution of Scotland's Seed and Ware Potato Sectors

Authors: Steven Thomson
March 2024

This report is part of Work Package 1: Economic Contribution of the Scottish Government funded research project: Delivering a sustainable potato industry for Scotland through management of Potato cyst nematode (PCN). As part of this workstream this report aims to provide new insights into the economic contribution that the Scottish potato sector makes beyond the often cited farmgate value of potato production. This report provides a statistical overview of this concentrated and highly regulated sector, including data on consumption, exports, imports, production, varieties, seed and ware sector – alongside estimates of economic contribution.

Work Package 1 - Economics, Work Package 6 - Groundkeeper Control, Work Package 2 - Decision Support, Work Package 3 - Resistance marker development and mobilising new resistances, Work Package 4 - Dihaploid induction for accelerated crop improvement, Work Package 5 - Mechanistic understanding of tolerance to PCN to aid breeding, Work Package 7 - Novel IPM tools, Work Package 8 - Knowledge Exchange and Communications | Final Report

Project Report Year One - Delivering a sustainable potato industry for Scotland through management of potato cyst nematode (PCN)

Authors: Ian Toth, Ingo Hein, Sanjeev Kumar Sharma, John Jones, Xinwei Chen, Pete Skelsey, James Price, Sonia Humphris, Kerry Leslie, Steven Thomson, Fiona Burnett, Andrew Barnes, Eric Anderson, Jim Wilson, Jon Pickup, K Preedy
May 2023

A summary report of progress made across the work packages addressed by the PCN working group in year one.