Late blight can cause total crop loss in the field or in storage.
Crop losses during the Irish potato famine caused people to starve since the potato was their primary food source. Diligent field scouting, early disease diagnosis, and prompt grower and industry response can control late blight. Some new strains of blight are much more aggressive than their old US 1 counterparts. There are also A1 and A2 mating types which together sexually reproduce spores that may survive on dead plant tissue and in the soil, though these sexual spores have not yet been found in the Pacific Northwest. New strains such as US 8 are gaining a foothold in eastern Oregon areas formerly free of blight.