Canada: Manitoba potato growers, gardeners need to scout for late blight

Manitoba gardeners need to scout for late blight in their tomatoes and potatoes — not just to protect themselves, but the provinces’s 64,500 acres of commercial potato production. Late blight — the same fungal disease responsible for the Irish potato famine in the late 1840s — was detected July 16 in a potato field near Carberry. Last week there were more than 15 infected fields, Manitoba Agriculture plant pathologist Vikram Bisht said in an interview Aug. 10. Most are in the Carberry area but late blight has also been found near Sydney, Melbourne and Glenboro. The disease was also found in a market garden near Oakville. “The message to home gardeners is if you… are seeing the (late blight) infection and have not sprayed fungicide the plants will go down and die very quickly,” Bisht said. More