Date: Friday 23 August 2024
Time: 12:00 - 3:30 pm
(The workshop will begin with lunch. After, there will be drinks and the opportunity to continue talking with fellow growers and presenters)
Location: Ulverstone Surf Lifesaving Club
Registration: Click here to register
[Please register as numbers are required for catering]
We are touring Australia’s potato growing regions with American potato pathologists Dr Amy Charkowski (Colorado State University) and Dr Phillip Wharton (University of Idaho). Join us for an in-person workshop tailored for seed and commercial potato growers and agronomists seeking to enhance their knowledge and skills in storage best practices and disease management strategies.
Topics:
Seed Handling and Storage: Learn best practices and effective management tips to minimise postharvest diseases, ensuring your potato crop stays healthy.
Pink Rot Identification and Prevention: Gain insights into identifying pink rot and effective prevention methods during storage.
Managing Blackleg and Soft Rots: Understand the threats posed by Pectobacterium and Dickeya pathogens, and explore management and control options to protect your crops from these diseases.
Controlling Powdery Scab: Discover management strategies to mitigate the impact of powdery scab on potato tubers, focusing on integrated approaches for sustainable disease control.
R&D Idea session
Chaired by Jason Hingston Hort Innovation
Jason will lead the group in a session to get ideas and input for potential future Hort Innovation funded project. This session will be an open discussion on all topics except for diseases.
Don’t miss this opportunity to network with fellow growers, exchange insights, and refine your practices to achieve optimal potato quality and yield. This workshop aims to be hands-on, provide practical guidance and expert advice to support your success in the field.
For more information, please contact: Tim Walker | 0439 333 811 | tim.walker@potatolink.com.au.
Meet the host:
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Tim Walker is a busy man with three passions in life – family, agronomy and farming … in that order. After 20 years’ experience in the field, Tim set up Walker Ag Consultancy where he works closely with land managers on tasks from pre-paddock selection through to harvest. To complement his role as a trusted advisor, he often tries out new practices and products on his own farm to support his recommendations. Tim and his family are growing potatoes, poppies, pyrethrum and grain, and rearing livestock.
Tim was awarded the Rising Star mantle at the 2012 AUSVEG National Convention and was the Regional Winner in the 2020 Syngenta Australia Growth Awards Productivity category.
Tim represents the PotatoLink project in Tasmania, and with his solid understanding of the topics of interest to Tasmanian potato growers, he delivers valuable support and events for the growers in the region.
Meet the speakers:
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Professor of Plant Pathology and the Research Associate Dean, Colorado State University
From 2001-2016, she served as a faculty member in the Plant Pathology Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and as the administrative director of the Wisconsin Seed Potato Certification Program. She earned her B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Ph.D. from Cornell University.
Charkowski’s research is mainly on plant pathogens that affect seed potato production or trade, including potato viruses, Spongospora subterranea, and soft rot bacterial pathogens of potato. She teaches graduate and undergraduate classes in IPM and plant pathology. She served as department head of Agricultural Biology from 2016-2023 and during this time the department doubled its research expenditures, and developed an undergraduate major in Agricultural Biology, a minor in Agricultural Data Science, and an online Masters in Pest Management.
Read about her research here.
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Dr. Phillip Wharton is currently Associate Professor of potato pathology at the University of Idaho (USA). The University of Idaho is a key hub in US potato research with Idaho producing in 2016, 6.3 million tonnes ($USD 968 million), making up approximately 30% of US’s potato crop.
In addition to Dr. Wharton’s extensive research experience at Purdue University (USA) and Michigan State University (USA), since 2004 Dr. Wharton has focused his efforts on diseases of potatoes including Rhizoctonia, Fusarium dry rot, late blight and other diseases of potatoes. He has also worked on international potato projects including helping Idaho potato growers increase their exports to Asia (Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia etc.) and developing late blight resistant potatoes in Indonesia and Bangladesh.
Dr. Wharton’s areas of specialisation include plant pathology, disease forecasting, fungicide resistance, plant disease resistance and the biology of host-pathogens interactions of fungal diseases on potatoes.