This program provides current-season information on crop status and challenges every first and third Tuesdays during  May, June, July and August. Featured topics and guest speakers also highlight each session. Registration is required to be able to attend these live, online Zoom meetings.

The Ag Talk Report is a newsletter loosely associated with our Ag Talk Tuesday program.

Since 2016, we have established small plot trials at the Aberdeen Research & Extension Center to evaluate efficacy of various products (fungicides, biopesticides, biorational products, plant health products, and others) to manage potato diseases or that may increase yield and quality. We also conduct confidential contract research. If you are interested in submitting a product for testing in one of our demonstration annual trials or as a separate, confidential contract research trial, contact Kasia Duellman for service details and rates. 

Since 2018, our team has been leading the southeast Idaho aphid monitoring effort, in cooperation with the Idaho Crop Improvement Association, seed potato growers, and University of Idaho extension educators. This monitoring effort builds on a larger, state-wide historical effort that relied on tall, fixed suction traps that were more useful for monitoring regional aphid patterns. Our network enhances this monitoring effort by employing yellow water bucket traps that are placed adjacent to potato fields to help identify more local aphid flight patterns. Aphids in flight, after all, pose the most risk for potato virus y. 

An Idaho seed potato lot is ineligible for re-certification if incidence of potato virus y (PVY) exceeds 1%. This particular virus is extremely difficult to manage, due the fact that numerous species of aphids can vector the virus in a rapid manner (within minutes). (This contrasts with another type of virus, the potato leafroll virus, where only a few aphid species are vectors and hours are required before they can transmit the virus.) As a result, no single management strategy will consistently and sufficiently limit PVY spread to daughter tubers. Many of the recommended strategies have not been adequately tested under Idaho conditions. Our aphid populations, the times at which Idaho aphid populations move from plant to plant, our potato varieties, and our production practices likely differ from other regions, and thus it is imperative that we identify the optimal combination of PVY management strategies that are adapted for our region. 

Our team has characterized fungicide resistance in a population of Fusarium dry rot pathogens. We continue that work by characterizing fungicide resistance in other pathogens.