Pest management in potato: crop physiology, thresholds, and decision support for sustainable crop protection

Potato production in the United Kingdom has not progressed beyond roughly 45 t ha -1 for many years, a stagnation attributable in part to pest-management practices and action thresholds that were established under agronomic, chemical, and climatic conditions that no longer prevail. This review revisits the principal invertebrate and nematode threats to UK potatoes and evaluates existing thresholds through a contemporary, physiology-centred lens. Potato yield is determined by two distinct developmental phases: tuber initiation, which fixes sink capacity, and tuber bulking, which is limited by canopy-driven assimilate supply. The yield impact of pest injury differs substantially between these phases and is further modulated by cultivar determinacy. Current thresholds rarely incorporate these physiological distinctions or the variable tolerance of modern varieties, rendering many of them empirically weak. We also assess current decision support systems that are available for potato pest management. Recent innovations in pest forecasting—spanning machine-learning models for virus-vectoring aphids and mechanistic simulations of below-ground pests—offer a foundation for dynamic, field-specific risk assessment, yet they remain largely uncoupled from crop growth stage and varietal traits. The evidence indicates that robust, integrated pest-management strategies will require recalibration of economic-injury levels using contemporary cultivars, explicit quantification of crop tolerance parameters, and full integration of real-time phenology and risk-forecast models. Such an approach is essential for delivering sustainable, climate-resilient pest control while safeguarding yield and environmental integrity in UK potato systems.