Plant Impact’s potato trial proves successful

ORGANIC fertiliser group Plant Impact has carried out successful initial trials of a new product which aims to boost potato yield.

The Preston-based company develops and markets ecologically friendly nutrition and crop protection products which are called CaT and PiNT.

AIM-listed Plant Impact has carried out the trials in the Britain, the Netherlands and Kenya on six varieties of potatoes by growers and distributors.

The trials compared Plant Impact’s products with standard fertilisation products and discovered that there was a “significant increase” in the number of potatoes grown which ranged from 12.3% to 25.6%.

There was also a substantial increase in yield from 6.7 to 9.4 metric tonnes per hectare while the storage quality of the potatoes also increased.

Plant Impact has now extended its potato field trial programme targeted in key potato producing countries, most of them being in Europe.

Over the course of 2010, the company has planned 30 potato field trials in eight countries with yield, quality and storage results being available towards the end of the year.

The worldwide production for potatoes covers 18.2m hectares in 159 countries and Plant Impact believes that there could be a £280m market for its products.

Peter Blezard, CEO of Plant Impact, said: “This is just one example of how we  can extend the number of crops which use our products with significant commercial value to the grower, the distributor and to Plant Impact.

“We first tried CaT and PiNT products on potatoes last year and with these excellent field trial results we have developed a programme to extend the number of countries involved in our potato trial from three to eight.”