Late Blight

Late blight of potatoes, the disease that was responsible for the Irish potato famine in the mid-nineteenth century, is caused by a fungus-like pathogen. It can infect and destroy the leaves, stems and tubers of potato plants. Dupont rep Kevin Cochrane tells us it's here this year and it's here early. "This is about the earliest. There's a lot of guys that don't remember late blight ever being here this early. This is the earliest it's been here in 20 years. Usually we are not worried about late blight until row closure which is happening right now. We are a good three weeks before we would start looking at it. The suspicion is that being that it's here so early is that it is possibly seed borne. So there is seed borne late blight. Mismanagement in the field you would almost say where U water too much or too heavy, you have the right conditions and you get a late blight infection, you're not keeping up on your fungicide rotations and stuff like that so it is almost seed borne or man-made or man created in a way. If that's true is probably an opportunity that it will be in other areas because we buy seed the same places that Idaho buys seed and that Oregon buys seed compounded by that would be the fact that Idaho had a really bad late blight year last year. They have the potential to hold the inoculum over from last year and reinspect this year's crop." Kevin says you have to be proactive.