Scots seed potato loophole needs closing

A loophole which has seen English seed potato used to grow Scottish ware potatoes needs to be closed off, growers attending this week’s AHDB Seed Potato conference at St Andrews have been told. It has become apparent in recent days that 18 crops of ware potatoes in Scotland this season were grown from seed imported from England. Furthermore, 12 of these crops were allegedly grown from stocks supplied by a grower who is not a member of the voluntary Safe Haven scheme, designed to assure seed purity. The crops may represent less than 0.5% of the Scottish acreage, but the major fear is that the seed may have come from stocks supplied from the continent and could bring the notifiable diseases brown rot and ring rot north of the border. More