PRESQUE ISLE – U.S. and Canadian agriculture officials have announced a plan to deal with the potato mop-top virus (PMTV) that was discovered this summer in Maine and eight other states.

The virus is harmless to people, but produces rings of discoloration inside potatoes that makes them unmarketable for processing or table use. It gets its name from the way the tops of infected plants resemble a mop-top hairstyle.

Though details have yet to be worked out, the plan will treat mop top, as well as similar potato diseases such as tobacco rattle virus and potato Y virus, as manageable diseases that do not require quarantine.

Maine potato officials had been urging just such an action since last summer, when mop top was first discovered in Aroostook County.

Farmers who grow seed also were concerned that any regulations implemented to deal with the mop-top problem might have had a serious impact on the seed industry by requiring costly testing measures that could have forced them out of business.

“It’s great news for us,” Donald Flannery, executive director of the Maine Potato Board, said Monday about the announcement. “We can ship this [year’s] crop as we planned.”

Maine shipped about 1.5 million hundredweight of seed potatoes in 2001-2002, of which about 8 percent went to Canada, Flannery said.

Last May, the virus was found in a test sample at the University of Maine Research Farm in Presque Isle and confirmed in July.

Shortly thereafter, officials with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency revealed that tests it conducted during the previous 18 months had uncovered 115 cases in samples of 2,500 loads from the nine states.

To determine the extent of the problem, this fall 3,000 potatoes were tested from each of the 17 states that produce certified seed potatoes. Those tests, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, revealed that the mop-top virus was present in both countries.

The tests also indicated that the virus does not appear to cause significant yield or quality issues.

The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the CFIA have begun working collaboratively with seed potato inspection agencies and commercial potato representatives in both countries to use management procedures to manage the mop-top virus.

Among the actions to be taken will be:

. The removal of regulatory and quarantine actions taken on farms to control mop top.

. Collaboration on research initiatives to improve seed certification and management programs.

CFIA will amend its import policies on PMTV to reflect the revised status of the virus.