Project: Potato Health - Managed for Efficiency and Durability

Potato is a major food and trade crop on both sides of the Mediterranean sea. Its vegetative mode of propagation and high economic value foster continuous exchange of living material, long production cycles, and severe losses to microbial diseases during vegetation or storage. This vulnerability is enhanced by the diversity of the production systems into which the crop is grown, and by changes in the geographical distribution of emerging or re-emerging parasites resulting from climate change and seed trade. Developing sustainable potato protection strategies, with low or no pesticide applications, is therefore a major challenge to improve the economic, environmental and human performance of potato production worldwide. The PoH-MED project aims at enhancing the sustainability of potato protection in the Mediterranean area, through three complementary working directions: 1) to infer local adaptations and/or population movements of major potato fungal and bacterial pathogens by unravelling their distribution, polymorphisms and population structures, 2) to develop, and assess non-pesticide control methods (resistant cultivars, plant defence stimulators, agronomic strategies) identified during the project or in earlier collaborative work, and to combine them through a systemic analysis into innovative crop protection strategies, and 3) to disseminate key findings through participatory actions.

Acronym POHMED
Duration 01/01/2013 - 31/12/2016
Website visit project website
Network ARIMNet
Call ARIMNet Call 2011

Project partner