Potato farming: Case Study

The weather plays a crucial part in potato farming. Sencrop indicators allow farmers to apply treatments to their potato fields with better precision.

Crop tour management

Risk and disease prevention

Input cost savings

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RISKS

Detecting the risks of potato-related diseases

Sencrop provides precision agricultural weather data for potato farming. This helps to prevent diseases and to optimise decisions as to treatment windows.

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Potato Blight

This fungal disease can wreak havoc in potato fields. Sencrop provides decision support tools that can help farmers identify and prevent the risk of potato blight.

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Pests

Colorado potato beetles, aphids and black slugs are all particularly fond of potatoes. It is essential to treat crops against these pests at the right time.

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Early Blight

Alternating periods of dry and humid weather as well as various stressors in crop production (drought, nutritional deficiency, etc.) stimulate the development of ‘Alternaria spots’.

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Dartrose

Also called black dot, this fungal disease affects both tubers and aerial parts of the plant. High temperatures provide ideal conditions for its development.

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Rhizoctonia

Rhizoctonia Solani inflicts various types of damage to potato crops at several stages in their growing cycle.

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Weeds

These plants compete with potatoes and reduce both yield and quality. It is crucial to act at the right time.

CASE STUDY

Potato blight: a major potato disease

As potato farming is subject to several risks, Sencrop provides a solution to stay updated on weather conditions through a convenient application. This system helps you detect risk factors and anticipate treatment windows.

What is potato blight?

Brought on by the Phytophthora infestans fungus, potato blight is a disease that can cause considerable damage to crops.

Main symptoms: crops infected with potato blight develop discoloured, oily spots on the top side of the leaves. On the petioles, stems and tubers, the spots are brown.

Yield loss can represent as much as 80% of the harvest, or even 100% in the most serious cases. Alternating periods of high humidity and warmth support the development of the disease.

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How to detect the onset of Potato Blight?

Sencrop’s connected rain gauges detect when the weather conditions are ideal for the development of potato blight in plots where potatoes are grown.

The disease thrives in alternating periods of heavy rainfall (when humidity is 90% or above) and warmth (with average temperatures above 11 °C or 52 °F).

The presence of water on the leaves initiates the germination process of potato blight oospores, which kickstarts the infection. To prevent that risk, you can access precise humidity, intermittent and average temperature, and rainfall data.

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Creating a Potato Blight Alert

The best way to prevent the onset of potato blight is to apply agrochemical treatment whenever the conditions are ideal.

Sencrop’s application can be programmed to alert you based on a combination of weather factors to help you act at the right time. For instance, you can receive a notification when the temperature goes above 12° C (53.5 °F) and humidity levels go above 80%.

Phone alarm
SMS
Email
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Decision Support Tools (DST)

Several decision support tools (DST) have partnered with Sencrop to help with potato cultivation. Use the application to combine your data with our partner equipment’s:

Niab
Irrigation scheduling system.
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Pest and disease management for fruit and wine-growing
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30,55

%

of Sencrop's potato growers

have already connected their Sencrop app to a DST.

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WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT US

Really easy to use, relevant information and comparable. It's really clever!

I genuinely enjoy the accessibility and how easy it is to look at the data. We’ve got 2 rain gauges and the difference in those two can be substantially different. I'm really surprised and I have never appreciated local variability!

Paul Arden

North Lincolnshire

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WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT US

The most useful feature is the possibility to set up a perimeter,

so the app will tell you the temperature range between dates and the rainfall. It gives me a much better understanding of our local weather, our rainfall and the direction in which the temperature is going when I make drilling decisions.

Andrew Bott

North of London, near Stevenage

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WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT US

There are often huge disparity about the rain in very short distances.

We can have 5mm of rain and 3-4 miles down the road, they may have nothing, so I like the facility to look all the weather stations in the locality.

Ben Cannon

Farmer - East Hertfordshire

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14 days to try the application for free

Sencrop has the biggest network of ag-stations in UK : find the nearest station or network from you. Find out more about it now! The Sencrop network covers the entire European territory.

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