Agronomy Week 2020 - Wednesday

AHDB Potatoes provide the industry with information on agronomy, storage, markets and prices, and related tools and services. Every year, we invest £500,000 in storage research to identify how best to store potatoes without CIPC. Marketing and market development has influenced 14% consumers to think potatoes are healthy. We work with the Governments of our top export destinations.

Through our research and knowledge exchange programmes, we help to improve how potatoes are grown and crop protection. During this session you will gain a real insight into the work that AHDB Potatoes do, and how you can make the most of this information. 

Programme:

• 9:00: Welcome and introductions – Antonia Walker
• 09:15: AHDB Potatoes: what we offer – Amber Barton and David Wilson
• 09:30: Strategic Potato Farms: putting research into practice – Amber Barton and David Wilson
• 10:00: AHDB Tools
• 10:15: Q&A
• 10:30: Close

Three new tools will be demonstrated by the data developer who built them. All are designed to clarify the potential for greater use of genetic resistances against potato pests and diseases. The data comes form National List testing and from Market Intelligence in AHDB.

Strategic tool. This illustrates clearly and simply the extent to which the British potato industry has and has not taken up varietal resistance to each of the resistances measured in National List testing, showing change between any two dates the user selects.

Alternative varieties. A user inserts the name of a current variety and the tool proposes potential alternatives for the same market of varieties with similar tuber characteristics and maturity.

Comparisons. A user inserts names of two or more varieties for comparison. A nice illustration shows the scores of each variety for whatever characters the user selects.

Programme:

• 11.00: Introduction – Anne Stone
• 11.05: The comparison tool – Kevin Dowle
• 11.20: The selection tool – Kevin Dowle
• 11.40P: The strategic tool – Kevin Dowle
• 11.55: Questions - Kevin Dowle
• 12.10: Conclusion – Anne Stone
• 12.15: Close

Farmers are familiar with the relationship between potato stem population and tuber yield as well as size distribution. The ability to map plant and stem numbers in a field can provide some objectivity in decisions like variable timing of vine desiccation based on stem number. Many techniques exist for determining plant population using drone images. However, stem population is the desired measure that agronomists need for modelling tuber numbers. Over the past two years, we developed some techniques based on artificial intelligence to start solving the problem of “how best we can estimate the differences in stem density across a potato field after the canopy has consolidated”.

Brief description of models being developed to predict yield and tuber size well in advance of harvest using free satellite images from the European Space Agency.

Programme:

• 16.00: Welcome and introduction - Jim Dimmock
• 16.05: Presentation - Joseph Mhango
• 16.20: Questions
• 16.25: Conclusion - Jim Dimmock
• 16.30: Close

Mark Stalham will present the summary of the AHDB desiccation programme conducted at the four SPot Farms in 2020.  This includes short-season seed and ware crops and maincrops.  It will examine the relationship between canopy death and skinset across a range of existing and novel chemical and mechanical defoliation techniques and demonstrate the effect of reduced nitrogen on rate of skinset.

Programme:

• 17.00: Introduction - Amber Barton
• 17.05: Desiccation, results from 2020 - Mark Stalham
• 17.25: Questions
• 17.40: Summary and conclusion - Amber Barton
• 17.45: Close