UK: Growers dig into on-farm innovations at SPot Farm East

Over 120 growers, agronomists and trade representatives saw demonstrations of best practice growing and new innovations in action at the first Strategic Potato (SPot) Farm ‘Super Tuesday’ of the year at Elveden Estate, West Suffolk, 5 July. “We’ve long thought about how we can turn the great research, undertaken and supported by AHDB with scientific institutions across the UK, into something practical our growers can apply and work with,” commented Mark Taylor, Business Unit Director for IPL and member of AHDB Potatoes’ Research and Knowledge Transfer Committee. “It’s events like this that deliver that opportunity and create the connection between good science and practical farm practice.” Expert-led tours around the vast estate included visual displays of trials to build a reliable, varietal dataset on Potato Cyst Nematode (PCN) tolerance; as well as conversations about how best to use irrigation as protection against Common Scab. More