Teagasc advises farmers to remain vigilant in bid to stamp out disease

TEAGASC has made an important step in the battle to protect Irish cereal crops against disease.

Steven Kildea has been appointed as plant pathologist.

He brings a lot of experience dealing with recent new strains of potato blight, as well as in the constant control of disease threats to barley, wheat and other key crops. His message for farmers is the need for constant vigilance.

“We need to be able to control disease to achieve full yield potential,” he said. “Disease control is a constantly evolving situation, so we need to constantly update our strategies.

“In the last few years, we have done a lot of work on potato blight with Dr Louise Cooke of AFBI in Northern Ireland. That work started in 2008 with the migration into Ireland of a new strain of blight.

“This new strain is more aggressive than previous strains. Previously, we advised people to apply fungicides about every ten days. Now we are advising every seven days in a strict regime.

“The blight survives on volunteers, potatoes that have been left in the ground, and in seed potatoes. There are a range of different fungicides, and we advise three or four different groups in a season.”

His expertise will also be invaluable in the fight against rhynchosporium and net blotch on barley, and septoria on wheat.

Mr Kildea said there is a lot of rhynchosporium on winter barley this year, and that continued vigilance was vital.

He continued: ”Teagasc has been closely monitoring this issue since 2003, and giving people recommendations on controlling it. This is one of a number of areas which we have identified as being a high priority in the area of plant pathology.”

A native of Co Monaghan, Mr Kildea is a native of Co Monaghan, qualified with a B.Agr from UCD, before going on to complete a Masters in UCD in 2005. He received a PhD from Queens University Belfast.

Since 2008 he has been working in Oak Park, firstly investigating the Irish phytophthora infestans (potato blight) population and most recently in cereal disease control.

He will lead Teagasc’s work on cereal and potato disease control, including the monitoring of Irish pathogen populations in particular to fungicides and host resistance. The main emphasis of the research is on septoria on wheat, rhynchosporium and net blotch on barley and potato late blight.

Mr Kildea takes over in his new role from Eugene O’Sullivan, who has retired after a long career of service to Irish tillage farmers in the area of plant diseases.