b"Keeping Potato Diseasesout of StorageIt doesnt just matter what happens in the fields, disease management in storage is just as important for a successful potato crop.BY: ASHLEY ROBINSONWHEN IT COMES to producing top notch spuds, its not just about what you do in the field, the storage season is just as critical. Potato diseases can attack your spuds while theyre sitting in storage and there are things you can do to protect them.The most important thing you can do is avoid injuries and damage at harvest time. Because those pathogens need injury to enter the tuber, Gary Secor, a professor in the plant pathology department at North Dakota State University, said during a presentation at the Alberta Potato Conference and Tradeshow in November 2022.Handling during harvest and into storage is paramount when it comes to disease prevention, Secor said. A lot of storage diseases are caused because the potatoes were injured during harvest. It needs to be vine killed for maturity so you get a good skin set, so you don't end up with a sticky stolon and pulling it off during harvest, that makes an injury that soft rot bacteria can enter or Fusarium, he explained. All potatoes have soft rot bacteria in the lenticles, and when you damage the potato skin, the bacteria will multiple and infect the spud causing disease. One of the best management practices is to avoid wetness and blocking oxygen on potatoes as the bacterium can survive without oxygen.(Soft rot is) more important as a secondary disease following other diseases. So, it follows late blight, pink rot, ring rot, dry rot, pinkeyethose make the injury that allow the soft rot to enter, Secor explained. He added it can cause meltdown in a potato storage. Fusarium dry rot on the other hand survives in soil and seed and can cause problems in both the field and storage. In the field it causes seed decay, wilting of plants and its a component of the early dying complex of verticillium, nematodes, and black dot. In stored potatoes it causes dry rot.Its the most serious disease of potatoes when theyre stored for a long time. So, it develops slowly, the longer theyre in storage the worse it gets, Secor said. He added it may be hard to diagnose as its symptoms are internal, but its easy to culture and Gary Secor, a professor in the plant pathology department at North diagnose if a test is taken. Dakota State University42SPUDSMART.COM Winter 2023"