The 10 entries in Laisha's encyclopedia that attack Potato, grouped by type. Each page covers identification, life cycle, the conditions that favour it, action thresholds and integrated management.

Growing Potato? The free Potato grow guide covers the crop from sowing to harvest.

Insect pests

• Colorado potato beetleLeptinotarsa decemlineataInsect · A striped yellow-and-black beetle whose humpbacked red larvae can strip potato fields of leaves in a few…
• Eggplant fruit and shoot borer (brinjal borer)Leucinodes orbonalisInsect · The most destructive pest of eggplant (brinjal) in South and Southeast Asia. Its pink caterpillars bore into…
• Green peach aphidMyzus persicaeInsect · A small, soft-bodied aphid found on hundreds of crops worldwide. Colonies curl leaves and leave sticky…
• Serpentine leafminer (Liriomyza leafminers)Liriomyza trifoliiInsect · Leafminers are tiny black-and-yellow flies whose maggots tunnel inside leaves, leaving pale, winding trails.…
• Tomato leaf miner (Tuta absoluta)Phthorimaea absolutaInsect · A tiny moth whose caterpillars tunnel inside tomato leaves, stems and fruit. Within a few generations a crop…
• White grubs (root-feeding chafer larvae)Holotrichia consanguineaInsect · White grubs are the fat, C-shaped, cream-coloured larvae of chafer beetles that live in the soil and eat…

Nematodes

• Potato cyst nematodes (golden and pale)Globodera rostochiensis and Globodera pallidaNematode · Two closely related nematodes that live in potato roots and leave behind tough cysts, each full of eggs, that…

Fungal diseases

• Early blight of potato and tomatoAlternaria solaniFungal disease · Early blight is a common leaf disease of potato and tomato that makes dark brown spots with rings like a…

Oomycete diseases (water moulds)

• Late blight of potato and tomatoPhytophthora infestansOomycete disease · Late blight is the disease that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s, and it is still the most…

Bacterial diseases

• Bacterial wilt (Ralstonia wilt, brown rot of potato)Ralstonia solanacearum species complexBacterial disease · A soil- and water-borne bacterium that blocks the water-conducting tissue of tomato, potato, eggplant,…