As Agriculture Director at McCain Foods Australia/New Zealand, John Jackson has witnessed the destruction of the tomato potato psyllid (TPP) and the bacterium it vectors – Candidatus Liberibacter solanacearum (CLso), which causes zebra chip disease – in NZ’s potato industry for 14 years.

McCain has potato processing plants in Smithton, Tasmania and Ballarat, Victoria, as well as Timaru on the South Island of NZ, which processes potatoes grown in the Canterbury region.

When TPP arrived in Canterbury in 2006, John and his colleagues at McCain were actively seeking advice, ideas or information to control TPP in their potato crops.

This led to John’s involvement in a collaborative Hort Innovation-funded project, where he used beneficial insects and ‘soft’ chemistry to control TPP population numbers in potato crops.

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