The majority of the state’s potato crop is in the ground, and the warm weather really helped to bump those plants ahead. Looking forward, however, there is one disease that seems to resurface every growing season.
Late blight in potatoes and tomatoes favors cool, wet conditions and creates lesions on the foliage and fruit of the plants. This disease spreads rapidly and can cause huge losses if not managed properly.
Dr. Amanda Gevens, the Chair for the Department of Plant Pathology at UW-Madison, as well as a Professor in that department and an Extension Specialist in Plant Pathology, shares more about how potato growers can identify late blight and manage it if the disease appears.
In addition to explaining how to spot late blight, Dr. Gevens shares more about a forecasting tool that the Department of Plant Pathology has created for growers to assess the risk of late blight in their area. That tool can be found on the Department of Plant Pathology website here: https://plantpath.wisc.edu/
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