THREE key areas of potato production have been identified as the mainstay of the 2017 management of the AHDB’s Strategic Potato (SPot) Farm, based in Perthshire.

Nutrition, cultivation, and seed will all be a focus as part of the farm's three-year programme of field scale trials and demonstrations. Content will be tailored to specific areas that affect the Scottish industry and will provide growers with an insight into how the latest new systems and practice stemming from AHDB-funded research can be adopted on their farms.

The plan was developed following its launch in July at host farm, Bruce Farms, in Perthshire, during which growers were asked which areas they would like to see covered.

For farm manager, Kerr Howatson, the key to making the project a success is keeping it simple: “Growers have highlighted nutrition, cultivation and seed, which gives us three really important topics to focus on, and we intend to look at these in depth.

"What we want to do is demonstrate good crop husbandry and try to identify the optimum conditions for growing seed and ware potatoes. It is not a one size fits all approach, but the project will highlight practical measures growers can use on their own farms.”

Michael Inglis, technical manager at one of the industry's main buyers, Albert Bartlett, welcomed the opportunity to demonstrate new techniques through the Spot Farm programme.

He said: “Growers need to respond to the ever challenging retail requirements of quality, yield and efficiency. There has never been a more trying environment for potato growers in the UK and this requires farm-based R and D to provide guidance on tackling these difficult issues.”

Another industry main player, Jim Aitken, senior agronomist at Branston, will be involved in the nutrition demonstrations and he sees merit in looking at two areas – matching nitrogen inputs to customer requirements and adjusting N levels to allow for organic manure applications.

“We need to look at nitrogen inputs, because getting those levels right will help us grow the type of products customers are looking for,” said Mr Aitken.

“Take, for example, Maris Piper for the chipping trade and Maris Piper for pre-packing. While the chipping market needs a high proportion of big tubers with a high dry matter, pre-pack crops need to be harvested earlier to get the best skin finish and too many growers are delaying bulking and skin-set by using too much nitrogen.”

He added that growers need to fully embrace the benefits of organic fertilisers: “There is a reluctance to accept, in many cases, that inorganic fertiliser applications can be substantially reduced when farmyard manure and other bulk organic fertilisers are applied. It would be reassuring if we could demonstrate on the SPot farm how bold you can be when cutting back bagged fertiliser in the presence of applied organic material.”

On cultivations, Claire Hodge, AHDB Potatoes' knowledge exchange manager, explains: “We are examining areas such as removing secondary cultivation, reducing working depths and improving soil structure to see what we can change without compromising the friable, free-draining and non-compacted seed-beds that potatoes need.”