The UK authorities said this week that they are hopeful they have managed to contain an outbreak of the highly contagious potato ring rot disease found on a farm in mid-Wales last week.

A spokeswoman told freshinfo that all three farms - in Cornwall and the Scilly Isles - supplied with seed potatoes from the infected mid-Wales farm have been quarantined and will be tested in due course. Testing at the infected mid-Wales farm is still on-going. Defra is also in contact with its opposite number in the Netherlands, the country which reportedly supplied the mid-Wales farm with the infected seed potatoes.

These were detected during the annual survey for ring rot carried out by Defra.

If the disease were to establish itself in the UK potato crop, then yield losses could be considerable. In addition, the seed export market is a very important one for potato seed growers in England and Wales and this would be at risk if the UK lost its ring rot-free status.

Helen Priestley chief executive of the British Potato Council said: "The good news is that the outbreak seems to be being contained and everyone is reacting very quickly to prevent its spread. The BPC has had a lot of press enquiries and we have been communicating to the public that there is no food safety concern. We had already planned a ring-rot campaign among growers for about this time as growers start to think of sourcing seed to plant in the spring. We saw there was a huge threat with cases of ring rot on the increase in Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands and Belgium. Now that campaign will have particular resonance."

Topics