Potato cyst eelworm (latin name - Globodera rostochiensis & Globodera pallida) is a serious pest of potatoes.
Golden cyst eelworm (Globodera rostochiensis) predominates in southern Britain while the white cyst eelworm (Globodera pallida) is more common in Lincolnshire & north of Yorkshire and Lancashire.

Symptoms of potato cyst eelworm

• weak and stunted plants
• lower leaves turn yellow and then brown in mid-summer, before stems yellow & die-back
• marble sized tubers produced
• spherical white, yellow or brown cysts, up to 1mm in diameter, can be seen on the roots if the plants are carefully dug up. These are the swollen bodies of the female eelworms, and each contains up to 600 eggs that can remain viable in the soil for many years.

Treatment

• no chemical control available for the amateur gardener
• destroy infected plants & tubers

Prevention

• rotate potato and tomato planting around different parts of the garden. Avoid returning to the same planting site for 7 years to avoid a build up of eelworm.

• remove volunteers (self-set potatoes)

• do not grow potatoes or tomatoes on infected land for at least 6 years

• test the soil for the presence of cysts when taking over a garden or allotment

• grow eelworm resistant varieties

The following have resistance to the golden cyst nematode:

• Earlies: ‘Accent’, ‘Lady Christl’, ‘Pentland Javelin’, ‘Premiere’, ‘Rocket’, ‘Swift’, ‘Winston’

• Second earlies: ‘Cabaret’, ‘Kestrel’, ‘Nadine’, ‘Saxon’

• Maincrop: ‘Cara’, ‘Maris Piper’, ‘Maxine’, ‘Nicola’, ‘Picasso’, ‘Sante’, ‘Spey’, ‘Valor’

The following varieties are also able to tolerate infestation by white cyst nematode: ‘Accord’, ‘Kestrel’, ‘Maxine’, ‘Sante’, ‘Spey’ and ‘Valor’ are and produce a worthwhile crop when grown as part of a crop rotation.Potato cyst eelworm is a serious pest of potatoes, which can be avoided by practising crop rotation in the vegetable garden..