Two online tools to aid potato growers in the battle against blight are being combined.
The BPC’s Fight Against Blight (FAB) service and the Blightwatch facility, run by Adas, the Met Office and 101 Smart, are now running concurrently in an attempt to offer growers real-time access to both weather-based warnings and actual local outbreaks.
The BPC reports that users can now register just once to access both services at either www.potato.org.uk/blight or www.blightwatch.co.uk.
Growers will be able to sign up to a daily alert for up to 10 postcodes, allowing them to tailor blight fungicide programmes to actual blight risk.
This offers a summary where a local blight outbreak has occurred, or when so-called Smith Period - when humidity and temperature conditions that favour the spread of blight spores - has been triggered.
BPC agronomist Mark Prentice explained that the combined offering was created following industry feedback. “Growers wanted the number of messages they received to be streamlined. This gives you one summary message if an alert is triggered, but if all is well, you’re left alone.”
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