With 1,341 crop protection materials registered for commercial potato production, adopting sound resistance-management practices and rotating modes of action can be a challenge.
To make it easier, the National Potato Council has updated three user-friendly fliers that can be downloaded from its Website, www.nationalpotatocouncil.org/NPC/
programs_resistancemanagement.cfm.
There’s one for herbicides, one for insecticides and one for fungicides.
Pesticides are arranged in a chart by modes of action and assigned a resistance action committee group number.
Growers don’t necessarily have to know the modes of action, just that in many cases they don’t want to make consecutive applications of the same group number.
The brochures include the major pesticide brands. But the growth of the off-patent or generic market has complicated matters, says Alan Schreiber, a consultant and president of Agriculture Development Group Inc. in Eltopia, Wash. Schreiber continues to review and update the brochures for the NPC.
The Colorado potato beetle has become resistant to several chemicals.
“I wish it were a little more simplistic to use,” says Nick Somers, a Stevens Point, Wis., potato grower who helped spearhead the brochures’ development. “The growers have to know the groupings are important.”
Somers has a consultant scout his fields during the season and help him choose the correct pest control measures.
“In Wisconsin, the biggest problem is Colorado potato beetles and their resistance,” he says. “Now we have enough alternatives that we can rotate out of neonicotinoids, and the cost is about the same. But it takes a little more scouting.
Photos by Vicky Boyd
To help prolong the usefulness of remaining insecticides for potatoes, rotate modes of action.
There are more than 100 products that contain the herbicide glyphosate registered for potatoes, he says. Within the insecticides registered for potatoes, 46 products contain imidacloprid, and 37 of those are generics.
“Many growers are starting to do that, and you can save the neonics and they will be here for a long time.”
The resistance-management brochures are the product of the NPC’s resistance management subcommittee, which tackled the original project about five years ago. Back then, the fliers were printed and distributed with financial help from Bayer CropScience. The information has since gone digital to allow for more timely updates.
Several new active ingredients were registered in time for the 2009 use season, prompting a major update of the brochures.
But registrations have slowed for the 2010 use season, Schreiber says.
“Right now, the focus isn’t so much on new products but changes to existing products—name changes or products that are going away,” he says.
For example, Furadan (carbofuran) from FMC Corp. will no longer be available. Belay and Clutch, insecticides from Valent USA that both contain the same active ingredient, will be replaced by just Belay.
Contact Vicky Boyd at vlboyd@att.net or (209) 571-0414.
