GEOPOTATO

Countries:

Bangladesh

Start project:

2016

GEOPOTATO will develop and implement a decision support service (DSS) in Bangladesh for an optimal control strategy of late blight in potato. The DSS will provide farmers with preventive spray advice when a late blight infection period is predicted to occur. The DSS also evaluates past sprays, which may result in curative spray advice when, despite past sprays, infection is likely to have occurred in the past few days.

Background

Late blight (Phytophthora infestans) is the most common and highly destructive, fungal disease in potato, tomato and other solanaceae crops in Bangladesh. Annual potato yield losses due to late blight have been estimated at 25-57%. Late blight can be controlled but only by frequent and costly applications of fungicides. Moreover, the degree of control heavily depends on the timing of the fungicide application in relation to local weather conditions, crop development and disease pressure. So, the efficiency of late blight control can be improved considerably by informing farmers in time about predicted infection periods of the potato crop and the effectiveness of past spray applications.