The
Plant Pathology Department at
North Dakota State
University (NDSU) is providing a potato blightline service
at no charge. This is the 13th year that this service has been
provided.
The hotline uses local weather data
collected from weather stations throughout the area to forecast
the occurrence and spread of late blight in 14 nonirrigated and
nine irrigated production areas in North Dakota and western
Minnesota. The data is processed by the North Dakota
Agricultural Weather Network (NDAWN) and analyzed by a computer
program to forecast when conditions are favorable for late
blight to occur.
The forecast information is used by Gary
Secor and Neil Gudmestad, NDSU plant pathologists, to make late
blight management and fungicide recommendations. The
recommendations are made Monday, Wednesday and Friday of each
week during the growing season.
The hotline recommendations can be
accessed on the Web at
.
Click on the applications button and scroll down to the potato
section. The hotline phone number is (888) 482- 7286.
The hotline will continue through
mid-September, depending on disease pressure. The hotline also
will be used to confirm late blight infection and serve as a
clearinghouse for national late blight information.
In addition to late blight forecasting,
the hotline provides cumulative P-values for early blight
disease forecasting and management recommendations. It also
serves to alert growers of other disease and insect news, as
well as posting messages of general interest, such as potato
field day dates.
The NDAWN Web site for potato disease
forecasting contains colored maps to illustrate the late blight
severity values (both two-day and seasonal), favorable day
values and P-day values for early blight.
Growers and scouts are encouraged to
send suspected late blight samples for positive identification.
Leaf samples should be placed in a slightly inflated plastic
resealable storage bag without a wet towel and sent to Gary
Secor, NDSU Walster Hall, Room 306, Fargo, ND 58105.
The blightline service is sponsored by
Syngenta Crop
Protection.