Spud Smart Webinar: Fighting Common Scab

Common scab is a pervasive threat to some potato-growing regions in Canada. Lesions and cavities on infected tubers can render them unmarketable. Researchers and industry experts are still trying to determine why the pathogen is more prevalent in some fields than others as well as the best methods for fighting the disease.

While growers use many different practices to control common scab, none have proven to be totally effective. During this webinar, four industry experts will discuss common scab and management practices offering the best chances for success when combatting the disease.

Webinar topics include:

• Summary and assessment of scab suppression techniques
• Scab-resistant varieties
• The heritability of scab resistance in potato breeding
• Factors driving common scab severity in soils
• Improving resistance of existing potato varieties using somaclonal variation
• Biocides used to control common scab in potatoes and field trial results
• Common scab species
• Relationships between soil chemistry and scab severity
• The effect of planting common scab-infected seed on daughter tubers and disease suppression techniques
• Soil chemical factors that reduce scab severity
• Treatments that suppress scab, such as plant hormones

Register here

Guest Speakers

Robert Coffin

For many years, Robert Coffin, and his wife, Joyce, were potato breeders in Prince Edward Island. Recently Robert and his wife moved to Trenton, Ont., to live closer to their daughters and grandchildren. Robert has had a lot of experience dealing with common scab and is happy to share his knowledge with growers.

Claudia Goyer

Claudia Goyer is a molecular bacteriologist for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. In addition to potatoes and common scab, her areas of expertise include biopesticides, resistance, microbial ecology, the nitrogen cycle and greenhouse gas. Her current projects include development of strategies to control potato common scab by identifying mechanisms of resistance in potato to Streptomyces scabieiand the use of biopesticides based on antagonistic organisms to reduce the presence of the pathogen in soil.

George Lazarovits

George Lazarovits is the director of research at A&L Biologicals, based in London, Ont., which implements molecular technologies for the detection and diagnosis of microorganisms that impact farm production. George is also an adjunct professor for the Department of Biology at Western University. He has alsoserved on NSERC Review Committees and played a key role in obtaining funding of the Biocontrol Network, where he served on the board of directors. George is often invited to be the keynote speaker at international scientific and grower meetings.

Gefu Wang-Pruski

Gefu Wang-Pruski is a professor and a potato researcher at Dalhousie University, Faculty of Agriculture, in Truro, Nova Scotia. Her more than 20 years of potato research have focused on tuber processing quality, nutrition, management of late blight, Verticillium wilt, common scab and wireworms. The research uses a diverse area of tools of systems biology, including agronomy, molecular biology, genomics and biochemistry.  She has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles and several books.