On June 27, PNW Ag attended the 61st Annual Washington Commercial Seed Lot Trial in Othello, Washington. Below, we speak with Tim Waters, educator, researcher, and entomologist at Washington State University.

Tim Waters: We're here at the WSU Seed Lot Trials. We've been doing these for a very long time. The main purpose of this field day is to get the industry together and share research that WSU and USDA are doing on behalf of the potato industry. The highlight every year of this trial is our Seed Lot Trial. We collect seed from growers and plant it out in our field here. It serves as an extra place for growers to come and look at what they've got growing in their field, and see what things might have come in on the seed that they ordered. Growers sometimes get some viruses, bacteria, and things like that, and sometimes it's hard to tell if those things are inherent in the seed or if they're from the field. By planting a sample of their seed out here, we can inspect and rate their seed, and the growers can come to verify whether what they're seeing on their farm may or may not have come with the seed. It's an opportunity to do another evaluation of seed health for the growers.

PNW Ag: How many growers do you usually have participating?

Tim Waters: In the Seedlot Trials, we have several hundred lots of seed and dozens of growers. It comes from all across the Columbia Basin - today's mostly from Washington. A similar trial is done by Oregon State University. It's a good opportunity for growers to get to look at their seed lot and see what we think of it in terms of virus transmission. Myself and other researchers who have been doing this for quite a long time, walk out here in groups and visually look for symptoms that we can identify. Then we put flags out there so the growers have a visual aid. We also publish a booklet that indicates how many flags of certain colors and the colors correspond to different viruses or pathogens. If a grower puts seed lots into the trial and isn't able to come out and look at it today, they can obtain the booklet with their results. We do this every year with Dr. Mark Pavek leading the effort. Mark has done this for a very long time, and his predecessor did too. As a result, we have a lot of data from over the years looking at what seed lots were submitted. It gives us an idea of the varieties that growers are using as well as the cleanliness of the seed.

PNW Ag: If a farmer wanted to participate, how do they get a hold of you?

Tim Waters: They can get a hold of myself, Mark Pavek, or Carrie Wohleb. We arrange for pickup of the seed from their farms, or they can drop it off at one of three locations. They can drop it off here at the WSU Othello Station, at Carrie's office in Moses Lake, or at my office in Pasco. We'll get the seed up here for the four different planting dates.

Tim Waters: We've got other research going on here as well.  I'm an entomologist by training and we're looking at controlling insects that vector these diseases. We're interested in the seed lot trial because some pesticide changes are probably happening shortly, and we're trying to prepare growers for that. A lot of my research is looking at alternative insecticides, timing, thresholds, and when to use those. We shared some of that information today. Dr. Rui Liu with WSU talked about the treatment of yellow nutsedge, which has become a big weed problem. It's a good opportunity to get people together, share what we're doing, and get their feedback on what we're doing, what they like about what we're doing, and what they think we might not be doing well. As an industry, we don't get together a lot. We have a winter meeting where everybody gets together and then we have this meeting. I really like this one because it's during the growing season. Growers are really cued into what their problems are right now and they're really excited to talk to us about them. We really look forward to events like this where we can get information from growers and consultants on where they want us to be putting our efforts.

 

PNW Ag: If they weren't here today and wanted to give you information, what's the best way?

Tim Waters: The best thing is to go online at potatoes.wsu.edu and today's pamplet will be available there. They can also reach out to any of us at WSU whenever they like. So Dr. Mark Pavek, myself, or Dr. Carrie Wohleb, we're kind of the leads for this endeavor and we're happy to get that information out and share that whenever we can.

PNW Ag: For those that were not here today, what's the biggest thing you want them to know?

Tim Waters: I think the biggest thing we want them to know is we're doing everything we can on their behalf and we really want their feedback. When growers are having problems, we want them to call us and email us, text us, and tell us what's going on so that we can do the research that will be most impactful to them.

Potato Field Days 2024: Hermiston & Othello

Pictures from the Potato Field Days held in Hermiston, OR (June 26, 2024) and Othello, WA (June 27, 2024).

Gallery Credit: PNW Ag Network

 

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