Potato Review

www.potatoreview.com POTATO REVIEW MAY/JUNE 2022 61 INDUSTRY UPDATES AGROVISTA launched its Navigating Nutrition programme recently. Agrovista believes plant nutrition guidelines require a radical rethink, backed up by the latest advice and appropriate tools, to ensure they meets the needs of crops, the environment and carbon reduction policies in a cost-e ective manner and its Gold Soil Heath report provides a clear indication of the physical, chemical and biological conditions within soils and their ability to support optimum plant growth and enhance nutrient use e ciency. e soil test should be backed up with tissue testing, ensuring that each nutrient is matched to need at every key growth stage, the report states. Trials carried out by Agrovista show that identifying and utilising the right tools in this way can produce positive results in a surprisingly short time frame. All nutrients required by crops must be given due consideration. If one is out of kilter, it can compromise the entire nutrition programme, wasting product, time and money. ere is range of products now available to growers to help ne tune nutrition and reduce its unwanted impacts: Foliar- applied, controlled-release nitrogen fertiliser , nitri cation inhibitors and soil-applied products that dissolve bound- up phosphorus, making it available to plants and improving soil health. EMERALDResearch Ltd (ERL) has launched a newprogramme to help potato and vegetable growers balance sustainability with increased yield and pro table crop production. OptiYield Core pinpoints each crop’smost important growth stages and targets these with the appropriatemixture of nutrients and biostimulant tomaximise performance andminimise waste. e company says trials of OptiYield Core products have consistently delivered improvedmarketable yields of potatoes, carrots, and other crops of between 12% and 25%, leading to signi cant increases in net ROI of £500 - £1,500 per hectare. Managing Director Simon Fox said: “In order to improve agriculture’s sustainability, we need to stop throwing nitrogen and phosphate fertiliser directly onto the soil and hoping it reaches the roots. Not only is it a waste of physical inputs, with today’s prices, it is literally pounds up in the sky as Greenhouse gases or down-the-drain in run-o !. is is whymost of the OptiYield Core products are foliar applications, all of which can be tankmixed together with conventional products to reduce the number of passes.” OptiYield Core is a package of nutrient and biostimulant products. A SKID-MOUNTEDDissolved Air Flotation (DAF) unit with a capacity of up to 30m3/hr has been recently launched byMSE Systems. is is the company’s rst DAF unit to be available for short, or long- term hire, with a second unit (up to 20m3/hr), soon to be added for hire or pilot study. In addition to the DAF skid each system includes a self-contained containerised chemical dosing unit. is unit provides the facility for fully automatic, ow proportional chemical pre-treatment, such as pH correction using alkali & acid, coagulant, emulsion polymer make-up and dosing. DAF units are used as a continuous wastewater treatment process. e new range of hire units are available to companies requiring a response to more stringent discharge requirements, increased seasonal loads on existing plants, and general production load increases on existing treatment plant. MSE Systems also o ers turnkey design and build wastewater treatment systems, including secondary treatment Membrane Bioreactors (MBR), and other forms of treatment allowing for the potential of water recycling, and waste sludge management. Rethinking the way we feed our crops Rental DAF units launched Boosting crop performance and sustainability A NEW handbook has been published by Juno (Plant Protection) Ltd providing updated user information for users of a spearmint sprout suppressant for potatoes. e handbook provides practical application information on BIOX-M® (MAPP16021), a natural potato sprout suppressant, which has been widely used in Europe since Annexe 1 approval was granted in September 2009, and in the UK since approval was granted in November 2012. BIOX-M® is 100% spearmint oil, extracted by steam distillation, and blended to ensure a consistent product. No chemical, synthetic or persistent additives or solvents are used in the product. It is approved for use on organic potato crops and is a volatile product which manufacturers state leaves no persistent residue in stores or boxes used for storage. It is applied as a hot fog to crops in store. e latest information is based on more than 10 years of experience using BIOX-M® in a wide range of potato crops, stores and storage conditions. Practical storage tips in new handbook 1 Technical Handbook (UK) Issue 1 – February 2022 MAPP 16021 www.junopp.com