b"ROUNDTABLE Expert views on best management practices in potato production.Pesky PotatoesPotatoes are a great crop to have in a field unless they pop up in yearswhen they arent supposed to be there, begging the questionhow doyou get rid of them? BY: ASHLEY ROBINSONERIN BURNS Editors note: This interview has been edited for weed science extensionlength and clarity.specialist and assistant professor in theSpud Smart (SS): What are volunteer department of plant, soil,potatoes?and microbial sciences at Michigan State University GAVIN GRAHAM (GG): It's really impossible to remove all the tubers during our harvest pro-cedures, depending on your size profile, or what your crops looking like. Some estimates are that you can leave up to 10 per cent of those tubers GAVIN GRAHAM in the field. So those tubers are going to stay in weed managementthe field and could potentially sprout in the next specialist and provincialseason and become weeds or act as weeds in the minor use coordinatoryear following rotation years, and even be direct with the New Brunswickcompetition for that next crop. Or else, act as Department of Agriculture, Aquaculturean alternative host for some of the other pest or and Fisheries diseases that we're dealing with in potato produc-tion. This can act as a as a bridge to spread these issues around and help them spread within theCallisto was found to show some regrowth for control fields or within our landscape. So, it is importantof volunteer potatoes, but overall, it showed good to try to look at control. control of daughter tubers.PHOTO: GAVIN GRAHAMIf you do leave those volunteers to grow for that full cycle or that full season, they can pro- your following crops are. One of the issues is that duce those daughter tubers, and then your cyclethese volunteers have a pretty wide emergence will just keep on repeating. So, it is importantpattern. They tend to emerge at various times over to try to manage those ones when you first seethe season. And this is really controlled by how them and try to limit their spread and limit theirdeep those tubers are within your soil profile.potential to take to give you impacts later on downAs far as management goes, there's no real the road. single one management tactic or technique that's going to work for everyone. You really need to SS: Why can they be hard to get rid of? integrate multiple strategies to try to get ahead GG: Volunteer potatoes are not an easy weed toof these weed species and prevention is really control. They are can be pretty difficult, dependingthe cornerstone of any kind of volunteer potato on what your crop rotation looks like and whatmanagement program.SUPPORTED BY:42 SPUDSMART.COM SPRING 2021"