b"ROUNDTABLE Sanitizing Your Spud Storage(and Equipment)Tips and tricks for cleaning and sanitizing your potato storages and equipment. BY: ASHLEY ROBINSONGARY SECOR Editors note: This interview has been editeddo not spread in storage, or by equipment for length and clarity. and handling of potatoes. These are not the professor of plant pathology at Northsanitation targets, but pathogens can be.Dakota State University Spud Smart (SS): Why is cleaning and sanitation ofSS: What potato diseases are potato equipment and storagespossible if you dont sanitize your important? storage correctly?NORA OLSEN Nora Olsen (NO):Soilborne pathogens,GS:The main targets, number one is nematodes, insects, and weed seeds canbacterial ring rot Ring rot is the number professor of plant science and potatomove from one isolated area or field and thenone pathogen for sanitation. The second specialist at Universityspread to other fields on equipment. We wantimportant pathogen is silver scurf.of Idaho to make sure that were keeping pests whereThe bacterium that causes ring rot is the they originated. Having a cleaning program,master of producing biofilms. It produces whether its brushing off or power washinga bacterial slime that's composed of excessive soil in between fields, especiallypolysaccharideslong chains of sugars on harvesters where there's a lot of soilthat are great biofilms that protect these associated with it, will really lower that risk ofbacteria from adverse conditions, like contamination from one field to the next. heat and drying and freezing, and those The webinar will spend most of theconditions that would kill the bacteria, time talking about cleaning storages andthose biofilms protect them.how important it is especially to minimizeThese bacteria produce a slime or disease and foreign material carry over frombiofilms, this enables them to survive on one season to the next. Now, if there was aequipment and storage surfaces for one breakdown or hotspots from the previousto three years. They can survive in the year, there was a lot of that bacterial goo.seed. They can survive on the equipment And I know a pathologist like Gary Secorsand storage surfaces. That's why it's so not going to want me to refer to it as goo.difficult to get rid of and why sanitation and But not being a pathologist myself, we'redisinfection is so important.going to refer to that as either goo, or laterSilver surf is a seedborne disease caused I'll talk about it being bacterial biofilms.by Helminthosporium solani This fungus Those remain as a source of inoculum for theproduces spores on stored potatoes after incoming crop if you had an issue last year. three to four months in storageThese spores are dislodged by air currents. When Gary Secor (GS):Potatoes get lots ofthe air moves through the storage bin, or diseases, the pathogens that cause thesewhen potatoes are moved, those spores are diseasesbacteria, fungi, nematodes,released and infect other potatoes in storage, virusesalways accompany the potatoes.resulting in more silver scurf. ROUNDTABLE SUPPORTED BY: Because if the seed is infected, the pathogensThese spores can also move between remain in the seed. And they continuestorages that have a common air handling to remain in the seed during the cuttingsystem. If you have silver scurf in one, you operation, or if you dont cut in the wholecan move it to all the others as well. Now seed, this is called vegetative propagation.some of these dislodged spores remain in Most of the pathogens that affect potatoesstorage is from one season to the next. They cannot persist outside of a live potato, orcan be the cause of silver scurf to newly 46SPUDSMART.COMFall 2023"