Under a searing hot sun, jets of water spurt from wide metal arms and patter gently onto the green leaves below. The uncultivated earth nearby is baked dry after months without rain, and the water level in the farm’s reservoir in Cambridge is unusually low. Dr David Firman surveys the test plots with a seasoned eye.
Firman’s entire research career has been devoted to the potato, a staple crop we produce around five million tonnes of each year in the UK. With the industry worth an annual £2 billion, the trials at this site on the outskirts of Cambridge could have valuable consequences for growers.
On this particular day – in one of the hottest and driest summers on record in England – farmers in the eastern region, as elsewhere, faced considerable challenges.
“The difficulties ranged from how can growers best use the water resources they have left, through to specific issues relating to quality problems that might result from the extreme weather. As researchers, we tend to help with these challenges on an advisory basis, but they can also inform future research, which makes this engagement really valuable.”
Firman leads a team of 10 scientists at the farm, which is based at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) in Cambridge. The NIAB CUF facility is known for its world-leading research focused on meeting the future needs of UK potato growers and their customers.
Farmers in nearby East Anglia harvest a third of England’s entire potato crop, and the team works closely with many of them through the Cambridge University Potato Growers Research Association.
“Of all the water use in agriculture, potatoes use more than any other crop in the UK. In the longer term, we’re interested in breeding varieties that might need less water, to help growers make the most of the water they have,” says Firman.
Read more about Cambridge University research in the East of England in a special issue of Research Horizons magazine.
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge