11/25/05 Potatoes grown under drip irrigation

University of Idaho potato researcher Bryan Hopkins was skeptical about drip irrigation when he was asked to try it on one of his potato fields, but try it he did. HOPKINS "This is only my second year doing it. It just gives me better yields, it gives me better quality. The other thing that we're very interested in is that it keeps the foliage more dry and so we believe we're going to have less foliar disease with things like early blight, late blight, white mold, those kinds of things." His 'better' crop used ten to 15 percent less water with the drip system. He's very early into this study so Hopkins isn't ready to encourage anyone to go right out and convert over because there are challenges when using drip irrigation on spuds. HOPKINS "It's expensive to get started in it. We got to figure out ways to reuse the tape. I don't believe you can just put in tape, you're going to have to put it in deep and leave it there and use GPS to always know there it's at or you're going to have to put it in shallow and reel it back in and reuse it every year." But Hopkins is one of many who see a need to conserve what water we have and use it wisely because as our state grows so does demand and so do the problems. Voice of Idaho Agriculture Bill Scott