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PRESQUE ISLE – Aroostook County potato crop specialists have been scouting fields for potato blight, but they had not found any as of Tuesday afternoon.
Potato blight, a fungal disease that destroys the potato plant from leaf to stem and the tuber itself, has been found in neighboring New Brunswick.
Blight strikes crops like potatoes, tomatoes and peppers during particularly wet and humid weather, such as Aroostook County has had for the past several weeks.
Potatoes New Brunswick, an industry organization, confirmed its first case Monday in a field near Fredericton, New Brunswick.
“There is no problem that we are aware off in Aroostook County,” said Tim Hobbs, director of development and grower relations for the Maine Potato Board.
“It’s been that kind of weather,” he said Tuesday. “Growers have been getting out and applying fungicide between showers to make sure there isn’t any.”
Hobbs said University of Maine Cooperative Extension has been scouting fields throughout the County. The service is part of an integrated pest management program where Extension specialists scour fields, looking for pests and blight.
Hobbs said there was “no apprehension” among growers Tuesday, even after the New Brunswick announcement.
He did say that “conditions cause more fear. The announcement was not a huge surprise, given conditions.”
Aroostook County grows about 90 percent of Maine’s 64,000 acres of potatoes.
A clerk at University of Maine Cooperative Extension at Presque Isle said Tuesday afternoon that all specialists were in the field Tuesday.
“We have found nothing,” said Steve Johnson, a crops specialist reached by cell phone in a potato field. “We hear rumors and we are chasing them down.”
Johnson said that blight has been around for 150 years, and was the cause of the Irish potato famine of the mid-19th century.
“It’s devastating when it hits because it attacks the entire plant, destroying it very quickly,” Johnson said. “When it gets out of hand, a grower needs to cut his losses and plow acreage under.”
He said sunny and dry days are the best thing to stop blight.
He said growers need to have a good fungicide program.
“Spraying is the active thing to do,” he said. “Waiting for dry weather is the passive way to stop it.”
“We need a little sunshine and some heat, but we have the potential for a very good crop,” Hobbs said.
Potato harvest, in Aroostook County, is about one month away.
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