Potato Review

www.potatoreview.com POTATO REVIEW MARCH/APRIL 2020 13 CUPGRA 2019 CONFERENCE For machine hire please contact: Scotland Stewart Fletcher: 07823 669059 England Darren Wonnacott: 07867 907919 MAXIM 100FS® is a Registered Trademark of a Syngenta Group Company. MAXIM 100FS® (MAPP 15683) contains fludioxonil. All other brand names used are Trademarks of other manufacturers in which proprietary rights may exist. Use plant protection products safely. Always read the label and product information before use. For further product information including warning phrases and symbols refer to www.syngenta.co.uk . For all production and treatment enquiries email darren.wonnacott@frontierag.co.uk telephone 07867 907919 or visit www.frontierag.co.uk Maximise your seed potential Controls Black Scurf and reduces Black Dot and Silver Scurf • Delivers a new standard in skin finish • Applied at 250ml/t in a maximum of 2 litres spray solution • Contains 100g/l Fludioxonil Maxim 100FS should be applied using a rotary nozzle system sited over a roller table. Start of a crop protection revolution By e 21st century is likely to be biology’s century, according to Prof Giles Oldroyd, who holds the Russel R Geiger Professorship of Crop Science at the Crop Science Centre in Cambridge. “Over the last 20 years, we have seen technology coming on to the market, with crop protection being increasingly biologically driven rather than chemically driven. We are at the start of that revolution, with new biological applications to agriculture.” is is likely to replace the products growers have historically been reliant on. His aim is to place the new Crop Science Centre, which is being built as part of a partnership between the University of Cambridge and NIAB and is expected to launch inMay, at the heart of this revolution. “Fuelled by the excellence of the academic world, we will be seeking to demonstrate the potential of transformative technologies, which are not yet thought even possible.” He pointed out the importance of the alliance between the University of Cambridge (of which the Sainsbury Laboratory is part) and NIAB as a means of increasing application of the fundamental understanding of crop science into research in the real world. While there are examples such as Prof Jonathan Jones, who with his work on genetics in potatoes has taken scienti c learning into the eld, however in academia this is the exception. In contrast, NIAB sits at the interface with farmers and industry, delivering solutions to the farmers, but until now there has still been a gap between these activities and the scienti c research, he said. rough the Crop Science Centre, he is aiming to bridge that gap, not by duplicating the work already being done at NIAB, but by making use of all the fundamental knowledge and understanding of plant science developed over the past 30 years. “I was lucky when I got into plant science, as my rst placement was in a laboratory focused on disease resistance, and I landed in the eld at an exciting time and became involved in the very rst gene cloning in plants. For the rst time, we were able to say here is the behaviour of the plant, and this is which gene has coded that information.” “When you look at the past 30 years, there has been a lot of activity and our foundational understanding of plants has been truly been transformed. We can now draw complex pictures of how plants function and the genetic pathways responsible for those functions.” Not all the problems have been solved, he admits, but 30 years of foundation understanding of molecular genetics can be built upon. While the 20th century crop protection was driven by the chemistry, this is all about to change, he said. Prof Giles Oldroyd