Saving money and increasing yield is the surprising result
Spending less on fertilisers and “recreational tillage” could actually improve yields for Scottish potato growers, a study aimed at putting science into practice has affirmed.
Revealing the findings of the second year of trials – which backed up the previous year’s results – to producers at yesterday’s meeting at the Strategic Potato (Spot) Farm in Perthshire, the Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board (AHDB) highlighted the financial performance of four different cultivation approaches to growing the crop.
These included: the farm standard of bedform, bedtill and destone at 12 inches; bedforming and destoning at 12 inches and bedtilling at six inches; bedforming at 12 inches and destoning at 10 inches, without bedtilling; and tri- ple bedtilling at 12 inches followed by destoning at the same depth. Farm manager Kerr Howatson of Meigle Farms said that while the triple bedtilling technique was the second cheapest option, it yielded the best results with a packout figure of 75.01 per cent and a total yield of 43.38 tonnes per hectare (t/ha).
This compared to 52.89 per cent and 28.33t/ha for the farm standard, 61.35 per cent and 34.53t/ha for the reduced bedtillage plot, and 57.75 per cent and 33.03t/ha for the no bedtilling plot.
Work looking at different nitrogen top dressing regimes revealed the best packout figures and yields were achieved from plots with no top dressing.
Claire Hodge – knowledge exchange manager for AHDB, which runs the Spot project – said potato growers often applied the top dressing as insurance, but said the trial results showed that such an approach could in fact be compromising the potential of the crop.