In a normal spring, the seed potatoes will be in the ground again in a few weeks. According to Bert Westhoff, it pays to think carefully about the approach to rhizoctonia. "You can also make money with it in consumption cultivation."
"Seed potato growers are generally sufficiently aware of the rhizoctonia situation of their seed potatoes and plots", Bert Westhoff starts off. "And they are also actively working on tackling the fungus. Pre-treatment is common practice and we see an additional tuber treatment among about a third of growers. But we think that consumer growers can do a bit more. Rhizoctonia is often underestimated. And it is not always seen. When you wash seed potatoes for consumption cultivation, you are often shocked by what is on them. You can easily find rhizoctonia on 10% of the tubers. Although this falls within the NAK standards, in a wet or cold spring with poor growth it can cost you a lot of stems and therefore yield. When growers ask me about it, I always advise them to send a tuber sample to the HLB. There they can accurately determine how much rhizoctonia is on the tubers and how vital it is. And you get appropriate advice."
Treatment profitable
In practice, Westhoff often hears that consumer growers find a rhizoctonia treatment too expensive. The technical product advisor of BASF has his own opinion about this: "A tuber or furrow treatment with our own fungicide all star is a relatively small insurance premium against the risk of yield loss due to stem loss. We have seen in trials that in consumer cultivation you can quickly drag an additional yield of 500 euros per hectare onto the shore. Of course it varies per situation, but it can pay off very quickly. And in seed potato cultivation the financial advantage is a multiple of that amount. It is not without reason that we see that no seed potato grower who has once become acquainted with Allstar goes back to his old product."
Also silver scurf
Specifically for growers of seed potatoes and table potatoes, Westhoff points out another property of the BASF fungicide. "Allstar has an interesting side effect on silver scurf. In practice, this fungus is usually tackled with a tuber treatment. Research shows that a pre-treatment with Allstar has a relevant additional effect
"put on top."
Allstar in brief
The Return on Allstar
Based on 6 years of research in a large number of trials, all star very convincing yield figures. On plots with moderate to heavy infection pressure, the application of Allstar results in the following compared to the market reference: