Research into the causes of potato bruising has revealed that an optimum hydration level could help growers keep blackspot and cracking to a minimum.
At a special meeting at BP2005, Gary Hyde, a professor from Washington State University told growers there was an optimal hydration point for potatoes; too little or too much would increase the chance of bruising, he said.
Costing British growers a reported £26m a year, the subject of bruising has been extensively looked into by many industry experts, including Dr Mark Stalham from Cambridge University Farm and Michael Alsop, md for Grimme UK, who presented their findings at the meeting.
Putting hydration management into practise would not be a straightforward mission, Stalham warned delegates. But with his work being supported by BPC funding, he hopes to devise a management decision system that growers can use to determine how quickly and easily their crop is likely to bruise.
Sponsoring the meeting and offering an insight into technical advances being deployed to help keep bruising down, Alsop explained that prevention was better than cure, and field selection and soil preparation were important parts of the process.
He said methods to help reduce bruising included using fewer machines of a higher output, a demand for continuous crop quality improvement, increased application of technology and machines designed for a long life that were easy to maintain. “We believe [r&d] is a vital part of our company. We will learn from [growers] and they will learn from us, and that offers us a great opportunity in the future for product development,” he said
