Written by cpm
Download PDF There’s a Yorkshire ‘tea’ that’s doing a proper job controlling diseases for one of the UK’s biggest specialist root vegetable grower. CPM finds out more about the brew that may eventually provide a helping hand with late blight control. Mugwort extract was keeping pace with the better blight chemistry. By Lucy de la Pasture The R&D agrochemical companies are constantly screening thousands of molecules before they find one that has potential as a fungicide – it’s an ongoing, costly and high-tech process. That makes the discovery of a potential new fungicide in a parsnip field in Yorkshire all the more remarkable. A tentative connection between the presence of common mugwort (Artemesia vulgaris) and a lack of disease was first made in 2014 by James Bramley, farm manager at M H Poskitt. While digging parsnips, he noticed that in the weedy patches where mugwort was present that there was no cavity spot, less pest damage and the roots were cleaner than the rest of the crop. The family-owned farming business is based in the East Riding of Yorkshire and specialises in the growing and packing of root vegetables for supermarket chains. The farm currently produces approximately 80,000 tonnes of…
The post Potatoes – Farm innovation looks promising appeared first on cpm magazine.
Continue reading on CPM website...
If you are enjoying what you read then why not considering subscribing:
