UI Extension field days in Aberdeen, Parma to highlight spuds, other crops

University of Idaho news release

University of Idaho Extension has scheduled late-summer field days in the state’s southeastern and southwestern regions that will provide producers updates on the latest research and a chance to see symptoms of various crop diseases.

Registration for the IPM Field Day at the U of I Aberdeen Research and Extension Center will begin at 8:30 a.m. on Aug. 16, with the tour starting at 9 a.m. The event will conclude at noon when a free lunch will be served.

Registration for the IPM Field Day at the U of I Parma Research and Extension Center will begin at 7:15 a.m. on Aug. 17, and participants will be treated to a free breakfast with bagels, coffee, tea and breakfast burritos. The Parma tour will begin at 8 a.m.

It’s been several years since a late-summer, potato-centric field day has been hosted in Aberdeen. The facility’s researchers present their work each June during a weed-themed field day, but the upcoming event will provide guests an opportunity to see symptoms of diseases and pest damage firsthand.

“There’s really nothing to look at in our disease plots in June,” said Kasia Duellman, Extension seed potato specialist and organizer of the Aberdeen field day. “August is usually better for people to see what’s going on in our plots.”

Duellman has wanted to organize a late-summer potato field day since she started with UI Extension in 2016, and she hopes to continue hosting the event for years to come.

In the future, a string of coordinated late-summer field days may be possible, enabling participants to conveniently visit Aberdeen on one day, the U of I Kimberly Research and Extension Center on the next morning and Parma and the third consecutive day.

“I think there’s a lot that could be done with that kind of coordination,” Duellman said.

Topics covered in Aberdeen will include integrated potato virus Y (PVY) management; aphid monitoring and research; demonstrations of seed treatments for controlling certain diseases; demonstrations of biorational and biological options to manage Rhizoctonia stem canker and black scurf; updates on management of early blight, late blight, pink rot and other diseases; the effect of simulated excess rainfall on potato herbicide injury; the effect of vine-kill speed and timing on blackspot bruise; the hemp program; and options to consider in potato rotations.

The Parma facility brought back its late-summer field day last season, following a COVID-19-related hiatus. Research in Parma will highlight potatoes, sugar beets, beans, onions and sweet corn.

Topics covered will include the following: the effects of wildfire smoke on potato quality, sugar beet field trials, new varieties of potatoes in the Treasure Valley, four onion trials, field molecular diagnostics using loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), the effects of high plains disease on different varieties of sweetcorn, the impact of wildfire smoke on the movement of bacterial diseases affecting beans and the effectiveness of 10 different in-furrow chemical and biological treatments on Rhizoctonia stem canker in potatoes.