The Potash Development Association (PDA) has published an updated crop nutrition advisory leaflet designed to help UK and Irish potato growers optimize yields, tuber quality, and profitability. The new guide provides a comprehensive overview of how three key nutrients—phosphate, potash, and sulphur—interact to support crop performance across different market segments, yield targets, and soil types. Due to the potato’s restricted root system and the low mobility of phosphate in soil, the guide emphasizes that phosphate recommendations significantly exceed actual crop offtake, often leaving surplus soil phosphate that benefits subsequent crops in the rotation.
Potassium uptake is another critical focus, as potatoes absorb more potassium than most arable crops. The leaflet highlights that within six weeks of emergence, the crop takes up at least two-thirds of its total potassium requirement, with peak vegetative growth demanding up to 10 kg of potassium oxide (K₂O) per hectare per day. High-yielding maincrop varieties can contain over 500 kg K₂O per hectare by late July or early August, with more than 75% of that amount found in the tubers at harvest. Given that UK potato yields have risen from approximately 20 t/ha in 1960 to nearly 50 t/ha in recent years, the guide stresses that potassium supply must keep pace with these productivity gains to ensure sustainable, high-performance production.
