WSU Potato Field Day

Washington Ag June 22, 2011 Washington State University holds its Potato Field Day tomorrow at the Othello Research Unit. The day begins with the Commercial Seed Lot Trial at nine a.m. and WSU’s Mark Pavek says;

Pavek: “The potato seed lot trial is the main focus of our field day in that all the commercial growers and the industry come to this and will get a book that has all the results of the seed lots in it and then seed growers from around the region will come out and also look at the seed and the results. And then we also have some other research that we are doing out at the Othello Research Station that we will demonstrate and talk about.”

Those other presentations include one on irrigation/chemigation monitoring and HD video systems and one entitled CSI Othello; using DNA to track predation in potato fields. The field day wraps up with a hosted lunch.

As for this year’s Washington potato crop it was nearly all planted by the start of this week but the Ag Statistics Service reports emergence is running behind normal given the cool, wet spring. About 78 percent of the crop is up compared to the five year average for now of 96 percent.

USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service and PCC Farmland Trust recently finalized a deal to permanently preserve a 300 acre portion of the three-thousand acre Hudson Bay Farm in the Walla Walla Valley as working organic farmland. The land is being preserved through the purchase of a farmland protection easement under NRCS’s Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Net.