By Longjohn
United Kingdom
I accidentally sprayed my potatoes with glyphosate instead of bug killer. Will this make the crop poisonous to eat?
- 10 Jul, 2017
Answers
Well, given that this is a systemic weedkiller and has therefore gone down into the tubers I certainly wouldn't eat the potatoes. I'm also not sure why you wanted to spray them with 'bug' killer in the first place... bugs on the leaves of your potato crop are doing no harm what-so-ever to the actually potatoes.
10 Jul, 2017
What a waste - sending you sympathy! You won't do that again! What bugs were you trying to kill?
10 Jul, 2017
Probably - glyphosate translocates through the topgrowth into the roots, and the roots on potatoes are tubers. Whether this means the potatoes will just die or not I don't know, but I wouldn't want to eat any surviving tubers. If you eat shop bought non organic oats, cereals, grains and sliced bread, cakes and biscuits made with wheatflour, you're already eating low levels of glyphosate because farmers spray their crops just before harvest with glyphosate, so I wouldn't want to risk increasing the load to a much more harmful level.
10 Jul, 2017