Potatoes at a crossroads

David Rankin, MD at Greenvale, and Mark Willcox, agronomy director at Branston, give their views on the challenging current situation in the UK potato market and what their businesses are doing to push the industry forward.

How is potato production looking currently?

Mark Willcox (MW): UK potato production remains very much at a crossroads, with growers evaluating the risk vs reward in an increasingly challenging environment. Cost of production, loss of chemical applications, access to labour and climate change are big issues, to name but a few. Many retailers have responded with better contract terms over the last two seasons in order to keep growers growing.

David Rankin (DR): Since the closure of AHDB Potatoes in 2021, it has been more difficult for the industry to establish market and production trends across Great Britain. The total growing area for potatoes has been shrinking over the last decade, and continued challenges posed by weather events and access to rented land for potato production is likely to have had an impact on the willingness of growers to plant potatoes.

However, at present, demand outstrips supply. For the first time since 2017, it’s predicted that this year’s growing area may be broadly similar — or even slightly greater than — last year’s.

What are the main issues affecting production right now, and what’s the outlook for the coming months?

DR: Due to a very wet April, this year’s planting season was late. It’s possible this could have a knock-on effect on yield, tuber size and the harvest date, in a similar way to last season. The industry is hoping for a clement harvest period from September through October, allowing for good lifting conditions and a timely harvest.

Dry matters are high in many crops, which often leads to an increased risk of bruising. Blight pressure and incidence was also high at the start of the season and risk of tuber blight in storage — leading to bacterial rots — is also deemed to be elevated.

MW: This season has been very mixed. The earlier planted main crops for movement off the field have hit budget yields and are of good quality. Storage crops were generally planted late, and in some cases, not in ideal conditions. This has created some emergence issues and crops that now need to bulk fast to hit target yield. Unirrigated crops are being hampered by the exceptionally dry period in England from June onwards. It’s too early to be predicting shortages but baker content will be a concern for some growers and packers.

How is the impending loss of mancozeb likely to affect you? Are you trialling alternatives?

MW: Mancozeb is the only active with good coverage of all the strains, so losing this will be keenly felt by the industry and is another ‘tick’ in the risk column. Alternative chemistry is still in our armoury so growers will be establishing the best combination of actives, and frequency of applications are likely to be used to the max. On the more optimistic side, breeders have a number of promising new cultivars with genetic resistances that are working their way through the national listing process that will eventually help the situation.

DR: The potato industry is incredibly resilient, having overcome the impact of multiple regulation changes over the years. The loss of mancozeb, with its strong anti-resistance properties, can also be overcome. However, it will likely add further cost to blight control programmes, thereby increasing the cost of potato production.

Whilst there are many different blight actives available, mancozeb is currently the only active with multi-site activity on blight. In simple terms, this means that it is much less likely that blight would ever become resistant to its use.

In recent years across Great Britain and continental Europe, many blight strains have overcome the activity of single-site actives, resulting in the redundancy of a number of products. To prevent blight becoming resistant to any one active, British growers are taking an approach of mixing and alternating products with different modes of action.

Greater account of varietal resistance to blight is an aspect of blight management that needs to be better implemented in growers’ programmes. A small number of current commercial potato varieties are very good at resisting blight infection.

This is well exemplified in the production of organic potatoes — the use of plant protection products is restricted, and consideration of varietal resistance is already a key management strategy.

Can you share any ways in which you are innovating in terms of production practices or new varieties/formats?

DR: Greenvale has had a bespoke varietal development programme for over three decades, in partnership with James Hutton Limited. Since 2017, we have been particularly focused on developing new varieties that are resistant to blight and potato cyst nematode (PCN). With strong relationships with other breeders and seed houses across the UK and Europe, we’ve been able to secure access to some of the most exciting new varieties on the market.

Over the last couple of years, Greenvale has been scaling new varieties to commercial volumes. Our new variety, Karelia, not only displays excellent performance in rigorous consumer panels for taste and quality, but is resistant and tolerant to both strains of PCN. In addition to an integrated programme for PCN control, it’ll be varieties like Karelia that will enable potato growers to continue seeing today’s yields, particularly as PCN controls such as Nemathorin are revoked.

MW: We are working on a few projects with B-hive to bring innovation into the potato industry. For example, we have recently started work on two UKRI-funded projects: one to develop computer vision systems for automated detection of potato plant diseases (PHENOTUB) and another to establish a pipeline to edit the potato genome for desirable consumer traits (TUBER GENE). These projects will bring much-required precision in detecting diseases and lead to enhanced product quality.

Other ways in which we’re working hard to make potato production more resilient and sustainable is to develop a route towards net-zero emissions. We’re collaborating with B-hive Innovations, the University of Lincoln and growers local to our sites in order to see how close we can get.

For more, see Category Insight - Potatoes, FPJ October 2024