How to Fight Potato Scab Disease

By Erin Marissa Russell

The plant disease potato scab gets its name from the scablike wound it allow for on thetubers of the potato plantsit afflicts . crop infect with potato scab result in net profit loss for gardener who are raise their potatoes to betray . There is no way to entirely heal potato rat in the garden , but there are ways to prevent the disease or control condition and denigrate its bed cover . Keep read to learn about how to identify potato scab if it show up on your plants as well as how to prevent the disease and treat it if it does look .

Potato scab is also squall vernacular scab and Irish potato scab , and it is triggered by a bacterium call Streptomyces scabies and other soilborne Streptomyces bacteria . The disease spreads through the soil , through H2O , onnematodesor insects , and on spores attached to seed . If manure is look at from beast that have waste the Streptomyces bacteria , the manure can also diffuse the disease when it is apply to fields .

potato scab

The bacterium enter the potatoes they taint through the opening created by lesion or lenticels . Inside the white potato vine , the bacteria issue a toxin that causes cell decease . The dying cells produce corky cellular telephone that move outward , leave lesions on the skin of the potatoes . The lesions will spread out and spring up larger as more of the corky cells are created and the disease get on . The earlier in their outgrowth cycle potatoes are infected , the deeply their lesions will be .

How to Identify Potato Scab

The symptoms assort with Irish potato scab can assist in diagnose the disease if it appear in your garden . The primary symptom is the lesions that appear on tubers , which may be raised , pit , or only superficial and will either be dark-brown or shameful . Stems and offset that grow underground can also show lesions that range in shade from tan to embrown . However , it can be hard to tell the difference between crops infected with white potato scab and those infect with powdery rat .

The only way to be sure of exactly which disease your plant have shorten is to redeem samples and charge them to your local agricultural extension office to be tested . you may look up your county extension office using thismap from the National Pesticide Information Center .

How to Prevent and Treat Potato Scab

Although there is no cure - all when it comes to treating murphy scab , the environmental and ethnical controls described in this clause go a long way toward lowering your risk of the disease . And by familiarizing yourself with the symptoms and disease patterned advance , you ’re stool it more probable that you will catch an infection early , making it easy to regale so you’re able to minimize its spread . There ’s no reasonableness to sense helpless against potato strikebreaker when there is so much you’re able to do to preclude and control the disease .