CU LTIVATION AND TECHNOLOGY Control of hormone regulation in potato plants with right knowledge and resources Stoller also discovered that it is possible to restore a disturbed hormone balance in plants. This proved possible by administering nutrients that are responsible for the hormone production or reduction in the plant. Since there were few, if any products available on the market for this, Stoller decided in 1972 to make this his business and he founded the company Stoller Enterprises Ltd. The impressive list of branch offices that are now available worldwide, sixteen in total, and also the number of no fewer than nine hundred employees, suggests that Stoller is achieving considerable success with his products. Advance from Southern to Northern Europe Already in 1998 the American company set foot in Europe and settled in the Spanish Alicante. From there, Stoller’s plant nutrition products are gradually conquering the European explained our problems was give us insight into the growth processes in the plant. And not by trying to sell their products straight away. A lecture on plant physiology, so to speak. What is stress, for example, how does it arise, what’s needed to stop it, but also how and when do plant hormones work, that was her explanation. We don’t really have that whole story in our minds in potato cultivation.’ Hormones serve as messengers It is Brans, the French plant physiologist and export area manager who explains again in Riemst how the hormone system works in plants, and therefore also in the potato. ‘When a plant becomes unbalanced, this is reflected in stress reactions. The reasons for this are roughly three external factors: too much water and too little oxygen or drought, too high or too low a temperature, and biotic causes such as pests/diseases or ‘When nature is in charge, the plant automatically balances a possibly disturbed hormone regulation. But that’s not always what we, as growers, like to see or want to achieve with our food crops’. agricultural and horticultural markets from south to north. They have already arrived close to the Dutch border. And so the jump was made to Agro-Sud in Riemst, a village in the Belgian province of Limburg, a stone’s throw from the Dutch border near Maastricht. Agro-Sud is a trading company in crop protection products, fertilisers, seeds and seed potatoes. The company is part of Aegten NV from the Belgian town of Meeuwen and specialises in advice for potato cultivation. It operates in the border region of the Drielandenpunt, the place were Holland, Belgium and Germany meet, with a large working area in those three countries. Here, manager Guido Schriever and his colleagues assist the potato growers for miles around Riemst. A lecture on plant physiology ‘The contact with Stoller happened after we encountered some problems in potato cultivation with a number of our customers. As in this season, the reason was a long period of rain shortage in the year 2016, resulting in stress and insufficient absorption of fertiliser, which in turn resulted in poor foliage development and moderate tuber formation. We tried to recover from it all with plant sap analyses, foliar fertilisation such as applying calcium phosphate and so on, but that didn’t really help’, Schriever sighs. ‘I had already heard about Stoller through friends and acquaintances. They said that the company might have solutions for plants with drought stress, among other things. We first came into contact with them at the beginning of last year.’ It was export area manager Elodie Brans who immediately took the trouble to travel from Spain to Riemst to hear our story, says Schriever. ‘What she did after we’d mechanical influences by wind, humans, animals or machines. The plant’s stress reaction to this is caused by a changing hormone regulation. Plants have three known growth hormones: auxin, cytokine and gibberellin and two stress hormones: ethylene and brassino steroids including abscisic acid. Under favourable conditions, a potato plant forms the growth hormones auxin and cytokine. This happens in the absence of environmental stress and a sufficient supply of the minerals and water required for this. The formation of auxin takes place in the above-ground growth points, while the cytokine actually develops in the root points. In other words: the plant increases the level of the stress hormones, always present in small ‘With the additional knowledge about plant physiology, we’ve acquired an additional tool. This is also reflected in the initial tests’, according to Schriever. Potato World 2019 • number 1 23 Pagina 22
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