Britain’s largest technical potato field event is coming up – and it's in Scotland.

The potato industry at large will descend on Dundee next month to take in Potatoes in Practice (PiP) 2016, the UK’s largest potato event.

Growers, seed breeders, exporters, plant health officials, agronomists, scientists, machinery companies, trade and marketing organisations all gather at PiP, making it an essential event in the potato technical calendar.

Its one-day programme takes the form of a full day of agronomy and variety demonstration plots with guided tours, a technical seminar programme, research and trade stands, static and working machinery displays.

This year’s event will be held on Thursday, August 11, at James Hutton Institute’s Balruddery Farm, Invergowrie, near Dundee. On show will be new crop varieties, the results of new crop treatments, live machinery demonstrations and the latest research on current issues.

And, for the first time, PiP will feature a range of potato-related talks from members of the visiting European Association of Potato Research (EAPR), chaired by Professor Ian Toth (James Hutton Institute) and Dr Mike Storey (AHDB). There will be further international flavour, with a visit by Chinese potato scientists and industry representatives to PiP.

In a world-first for the industry, James Hutton Ltd will launch a new molecular diagnostic service at PiP, resulting from a five-year industry-wide collaboration supported by Innovate UK and AHDB. This is capable of distinguishing with 100% accuracy between the three main groups of free living nematodes and offers greater precision than traditional microscopic testing.

On machinery, Euan Caldwell, head of farm, field and glasshouses at the Hutton, said: “We’ll see technical demonstrations by Grimme UK and DuPont will hold a clinic on nematicide application. The machinery demos are scheduled to run twice, at 10:50 and again at 14:00, so there’ll be an opportunity for all visitors to see them.”

* The PiP seminar programme is a key part of technical knowledge exchange, with hot topics being discussed this year. Included in that will be news of research on potato cyst nematode (PCN), which costs the industry £50m annually.

Potato storage developments will be covered by crop storage experts, Dr Glyn Harper (Sutton Bridge Crop Storage Research) and Dr Mark Taylor (James Hutton Institute).

* PiP is organised and hosted by the James Hutton Institute, with the sponsorship of AHDB Potatoes, Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) and Agrii.