Disease aspects of potato production

Abstract

Disease control is a prerequisite for improving and maintaining yield and quality of the potato crop and since the potato became widely grown serious outbreaks of disease and crop failures and consequent social and economic effects have repeatedly provided incentive for improvement. For example, in the mid-eighteenth century the widespread occurrence of leaf roll in Germany and the UK led to poor yields, and in the mid-nineteenth century late blight devastated crops in the New York and New England states of the USA. A little later, the catastrophic blight epidemics ravaged the Irish crop, resulting in famine and mass emigration of the population. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, wart disease, found first in Czechoslovakia and later in other parts of Europe, threatened the survival of the cultivars of the day. When the causes of these diseases were discovered, early investigators formulated what have become established as the basic methods of disease control. For example, studies of viruses and wart led to the establishment of seed tuber production in areas less favourable to the spread of disease, isolated from the main potato growing regions and where close control by inspection for freedom from diseases as well as for purity of cultivar could be maintained. More recently the occurrence of rots and blemishes on freshly harvested or stored potatoes has stimulated investigations into ways of conrolling or at least avoiding them.