The prospect of a global fight against late blight in potato is a step closer to reality with Europe’s EuroBlight helping to inspire the creation of a similar network in Asia. The launch of AsiaBlight follows the founding of a network in Latin America (Red Tizon Latina) and could be particularly significant as China and India are now among the largest potato producers in the world.
‘AsiaBlight: a regional network for knowledge sharing to improve control of potato late blight disease’ was officially launched at a satellite event during the World Potato Congress in Beijing, China, attracting around 50 people from a mix of countries.
The CIP (International Potato Centre) for Asia, which has encouraged the launch of AsiaBlight, has noted that the disease remains a major constraint for farmers around the world. Though the pathogen behind late blight, Phytophthora infestans , is widely controlled with fungicides, it says, these chemicals can represent a significant cost to producers and carry risks for environmental and human health.
It adds that this is especially a problem for smallholders in developing nations as they lack the necessary resources or knowledge, so often do not apply fungicides properly and suffer major crop loss despite using them.
“Late blight is a huge problem globally. It is managed with fungicides, but it’s still a big issue,” said Greg Forbes, a senior scientist at the CIP, who was instrumental in AsiaBlight’s creation.
The problems faced by smallholders were raised, too, at the 3rd International Symposium on Phytophthora : Taxonomy, Genomics, Pathogenicity, Resistance and Disease Management held in India in September where David Cooke, from ENDURE partner The James Hutton Institute, shared information on the EuroBlight network and met with key late blight researchers in India.
In India, reports EuroBlight, crop losses are especially difficult for the many smaller-scale producers who borrow money to grow each crop and generally do not have access to the full range of fungicides or the specialist knowledge and management advice they require.
Back in Europe, monitoring of the disease is ongoing and from next year will be expanded to include Romania which, with 190,000 hectares dedicated to potatoes, is the largest potato grower in the European Union.
Over the past two years, the European potato sector has been taking ‘fingerprints’ of Phytophthora infestans. Infected parts of plants are rubbed on special cards which are then analysed in laboratories in Scotland and the Netherlands and a DNA profile is compiled, generating a picture of the genetic variation in Europe.
EuroBlight says the European inventory has already given the parties a better understanding of the strains of phytophthora which are active in Europe. This information enables more targeted use of crop protectors and helps growers to choose potato species with the right levels of resistance.
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Last update: 24/05/2023 - ENDURE © 2009 - Contact ENDURE - Disclaimer