UK: Elveden Estate welcomes first visitors to Strategic Potato Farm project

The complex balance of variables which contribute to the perfect potato are being put to the test at an East Anglian proving ground for the latest growing ideas. The Elveden Estate, on the Norfolk-Suffolk border near Thetford, is the nation’s second Strategic Potato (SPot) Farm – a project co-ordinated by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board’s potatoes division (AHDB Potatoes). At its first open event farmers were shown the initial phases of trials which will compare a diverse range of factors across a raft of commercial potato varieties. They include the optimum timing of irrigation to control common scab, the efficiency of herbicides and nitrate fertilisers in different conditions, and the varying levels of susceptibility to infection, pests and drought. More