As a member of the CALS potato team, weed scientist Pamela Hutchinson wants Idaho potato growers to be able to maximize their crop’s yield and quality, regardless of which potato variety they’re growing, while minimizing environmental impacts.
           
Hutchinson knows that pests—and pest control—affect different potato varieties differently. At Aberdeen, she is examining how Russet Burbank and Russet Norkotah potatoes respond to infestations of hairy nightshade.
           
A member of the same plant family as the potato, hairy nightshade is devilishly difficult to control in potato fields. Not only is it a relative, it’s a survivor: It can germinate throughout the growing season, producing 1,700-plus berries per plant and 10 to 35 seeds per berry. Because more than 90 percent of its seed can remain viable in the soil for five years, growers planting potatoes every three or four years can find themselves battling seed produced by the same nightshade plants that escaped control the last time around.
           
In her research, Hutchinson has learned that the larger leaf canopy of Russet Burbank can quickly shade hairy nightshade plants, preventing relatively low- and moderate-density populations of the weed from robbing Russet Burbank of its yields. With its smaller leaf canopy, however, Russet Norkotah can suffer yield losses from as few as two or three hairy nightshade plants per meter of row.
           
“The potato team understands how varieties differ in other ways as well—and how knowledge of these differences can be used to develop management recommendations specific to each variety,” Hutchinson says.