ORONO – The U.S Department of Agriculture’s New England Plant, Soil and Water Laboratory has received a national Excellence in Technology Transfer Award from the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer.

The award recognizes the laboratory’s success in transferring research results to the potato industry with its Potato Systems Planner computer software.

The planner is a support tool distributed on compact disc to assist growers in selecting profitable, environmentally sound cropping systems and management practices. It provides growers with research on 14 crop rotations that are evaluated for their effects on potato yield and quality, nutrient availability, plant diseases, potential profitability and risk and other factors, according to USDA laboratory research leader Wayne Honeycutt.

Since its release in 2005, more than 1,100 copies of the Potato Systems Planner have been requested by growers, consultants, extension specialists and scientists in 26 states and 28 countries, according to a recent press release from Honeycutt.