The 2025 Hutchinsons Potato Trials Results Day at Worth Farms, Lincolnshire, showcased key field trials and research to help tackle major potato industry challenges, including PCN, herbicide safety, wireworm, catch crops, blight, and Alternaria.

Fera Science’s Enigma I project is advancing to its second phase, focusing on sustainable wireworm control. Agri-food organizations are invited to join as co-funding partners for tailored research and practical solutions.

Emerald Research Ltd (ERL) and a leading potato grower in South West England have won an eighteen-month Innovate UK project to tackle the ever-growing problem of wireworm damage in potatoes.

The dwindling availability of insecticide seed treatment and nematicides has paved the way for pest control using entomopathogenic nematodes.

Fera scientists have made breakthrough progress with industry-steered wireworm research, highlighting where and when the pest is expected to pose the highest risk to arable and fresh produce crops over the next two decades. 

This year’s Hutchinsons Potato Demonstration Day, held at Worth Farms, Holbeach, Lincolnshire, focussed on potential solutions to address some of the key challenges faced by UK potato growers.

The Fera-led R&D project, Enigma I, is reporting impressive results halfway through its investigation into sustainable wireworm control – a pest issue causing significant annual yield losses in root vegetable and salad crops.

Following an upward trend in wireworm damage in root vegetable and cereal crops throughout the UK, industry leaders have joined forces to co-fund a Fera-led R&D project to find an end-to-end solution