The starting point for combating Phytophthora

As a grower, you invest in your crop from planting to harvest and even beyond when it comes to storage. All the efforts you make to optimally grow and protect your potato crop should result in a high yield with excellent quality.

Of course, your success is highly dependent on the weather conditions, but the decisions you make have a major impact on the 'health' of your potatoes. Whether the potatoes go into storage or are delivered directly to the processing industry for the production of chips and other potato products: the potatoes must be healthy and of good quality.

When does late blight occur?
Phytophthora can develop quickly with changeable weather and rising temperatures. It is therefore important to be alert and to keep the spraying schedule closed, because preventive work is always much better and cheaper than having to correct curatively afterwards. This is especially important with the new, more aggressive strains.

How do you recognize Phytophthora

• Phytophthora is characterized by a necrotic brown spot on the leaf surrounded by a light green ring.
• The leaf spots are usually dark and irregular in shape and spread rapidly as the disease progresses.
• Phytophthora appears on the upper side of the leaf as a necrotic dark spot and on the underside as a white fungal fluff, resembling fine cotton at the edge of the necrotic spots.
• On the stem, the spots are often elongated, grey-brown/black in color and may encircle the entire stem.

How can you prevent late blight?
Phythophthora is a problem that must be tackled preventively. If the disease is already present in your crop, intervention is more difficult and more expensive. Protect your crop in time before the late blight can spread. In concrete terms, the advice is to use a product in the early phase of foliage development until the beginning of flowering that grows with the crop and thus protects the new leaves. In view of the variable weather conditions in which Phytophthora occurs, the product must also be rain-resistant quickly.
In the most critical phase of rapid foliage growth, REVUS® protects the existing and new foliage for a long time and effectively through rapid absorption and distribution in the wax layer. Revus is rainproof within half an hour.

If you have not completed your schedule or have missed a rain shower, then a remedy with retroactive effect - i.e. curativeness - is necessary. In such a case it is good to know that there are also AMPHORE® Flex is. This is Revus with added cymoxanil. As a result, you do not have to mix cymoxanil separately, you save on costs and you opt for extra ease of use.

A different strategy in 2022?
This season there are no more mancozeb-containing products. The start of the season may therefore be different. Have you already thought about how you will tackle Phytophthora?

Would you like to know what the specialists advise? Click here