Launched at the agm of Scottish Society for Crop Research on July 9, SCRI's new potato product innovation centre is the latest in a series of steps designed to strengthen at SCRI what to date has been arguably the weakest point in the majority of UK horticultural research ñ the link between the research itself and its final application in the industry itself.
It follows the establishment in 1989 of the commercial arm of SCRI, Mylnefield Research Services (MRS), which had the aim of enhancing competitiveness and better fulfilling the needs of the horticultural industry. MRS markets the institute's resources and expertise and carries out near-market research and development, activities that the product innovation centre will be consolidating upon, and crucially, integrating more tightly with SCRI's core research.
Dr Jonathan Snape, commercial manager of Mylnefield Research Services, explains: “SCRI was doing fundamental research on potatoes, developing new methodologies on plant breeding, new molecular markers and new diagnostics for plant potato health, while on the other hand MRS was doing commercial potato breeding for a number of companies. The idea of the product innovation centre was to link all these activities in a more coordinated fashion ñ although they weren't completely independent in the past the relationship was more ad hoc. Now, we have a more formal structure in place to ensure that the links between the central science and commerical applications of that science are in place.”
At the helm of the potato product innovation centre is Professor Howard Davies, who is leading a management team of scientists comprised of Dr John Bradshaw, potato breeding and genetics, Dr Glen Brian, genomics, and Leslie Torrance, pathology and diagnostics.
“We still want all the individual research scientists at the institute to continue to do innovative science within the SCRI framework of research,” says Bradshaw. “The aim of the centre is to make sure we have all the relevant commercialisation and knowledge transfer roots in place. We're in the business of strategic research so the management team at the product innovation centre will be making itself aware of the commercial potential of all the research that's going on here, and we can then take this to the marketplace.”
Through the centre, the institute will continue adding to an already impressive portfolio of research, and a list of clients that features several of the potato industry's major names. SCRI has contracts with most of the big companies in the UK, including major world players such as McCain for French fries, Frito Lay for crisps, and Greenvale for the fresh market.
The institute plans to retain fully its role at the heart of developments affecting the potato industry in the UK. However, Snape says the increasingly international character of the potato business will lead the institute into more projects overseas.
“We want to build on our existing contracts,” he says, “which means looking abroad and looking at the new markets and opportunities that are going to open up.”
SCRI wants the best possible tools at its disposal to meet these international needs, and accordingly, biotechnology expert Davies and his team are resolute about continuing to persue transgenic research programmes into potatoes. While the public may not want GM products on UK shelves today, SCRI is adamant that, as with so many new technologies, acceptance will inevitably come with time, if the product has something new to offer the consumer and industry.
Bradshaw says with a potential time-lag of 15 years between the start of a strategic research programme and its final application, SCRI's commitment to GM is long-term, so as and when acceptance of GM fresh produce comes, the institute will be well primed for launch. Davies is well-placed to ensure compliance with EU regulations as he is a member of the European Food Safety Authority GM Risk Assessment panel.
“We're not shying away from GM approaches as we believe that they will complement potato breeding for the improvement of potato crops,” says Bradshaw. “We want to make sure we have everything in place so that when the political climate changes in Europe and they become more acceptable, we'll be in a good position to market GM potatoes.”
He adds that until this time, transgenic approaches can, and will, provide a valuable study tool for scientists at the institute.
“GM approaches are extremely useful for our research, helping us to understand the biochemical pathways that underlie a lot of the economically important traits. Davies and his colleagues have done a lot of work on carbohydrate metabolism and the molecular basis for the biochemistry of host resistance to key diseases. Transgenic approaches to understanding the genetic control of these pathways ñ targeting and then upregulating or downregulating key genes and enzymes ñ are very important research here. We feel that this research will have applications through GM potatoes that will benefit the industry.
“We'll continue using it as a research tool and through the centre we're going to be talking to end users and then deciding where we think a GM approach is more attractive than conventional breeding, so we have the two approaches complementing one another.”
Davies adds: “A key issue will be to use modern breeding approaches to “stack” new traits and to look for new genes in wild potato species, in order to make it harder for pest and pathogens to break resistance mechanisms.”
With the safety of GM products rightly or wrongly under question in the media, the centre is working hard to ensure that all the necessary quality controls are put in place, and that all GM tubers that originate from SCRI will be both safe to release into the environment and safe to eat.
“On one hand we're looking at the impact of growing GM crops on the environment at different scales,” says Snape. “We're also examining new tools to look for unintended effects of GM crops. The institute's safety research is being supported with Food Standards Agency funding.
Crucially, says Bradshaw, the product innovation centre will give greater focus to what SCRI does best: excelling in the development of potatoes that have the perfomance and quality demanded of them by industry.
“We've always put a heavy emphasis on inbuilt disease and pest resistance,” he says. “We're very conscious that in order to produce a successful variety ñ and this is the real challenge for potato breeders at the moment ñ we have got to combine high levels of durable disease and pest resistance with, most importantly, the quality that either processors or supermarkets want. All the companies we're working with are saying ëthis is our quality spec for our product, be it for French fries, crisps or for the supermarkets ñ we need you to combine that with high levels of resistance.”
On the pest front, it is the Potato Cyst Nematode (PCN), particularly the white variety Pallida in ware growing areas, that has proved the most recent challenge to the industry, as a widely-used nematicide to combat it is soon to be banned. For disease, late blight remains potentially the most devastating for potatoes worldwide, especially since the 1980s when new strains spread out of Mexico threatening epidemics earlier in the year and the erosion of resistance. They were also resistant to metalaxyl, a commonly-used fungicide.
However, the institute has been selecting for field resistance since the 1960s, and this long-term breeding programme is promising solutions to both of the above.
“We've introduced PCN resistance and blight resistance from wild and cultivated species of South and Central America,” says Bradshaw, “and we've got these into potatoes we're familiar with. The challenge now is to combine this resistance with acceptable yield and quality. That's the driving force behind our breeding programme.”
GM technology could play a major part in breeding these successful varieties. “We're keen to develop modern molecular approaches of selection.
“My dream is to be able to go into the glasshouse, take leaf samples from all the seedlings, extract the DNA, and find out which one contains the desirable genes. And you could use modern methods of rapid micro-propagation to get new varieties very quickly.”
The institute has also forged a good reputation for its research with end user relevance in diagnostics for disease testing and is developing these for a range of different diseases, either based on antibodies or PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction ñ the same technology as a forensic scientist might use).
A strong emphasis on disease and pest resistance mean organic growers have an obvious interest in work at the institute. Greenvale has been working with a number of SCRI-developed varieties, notably Lady Balfour and Eve Balfour, both named after one of the founders of the organic movement, and both displaying good levels of blight and PCN resistance.
But resistance is not the only quality sought by scientists at the institute, who are investigating myriad ways for the improvement of potato varieties through breeding. For example, by enhancing the vitamin and mineral content of tubers. In spite of what those advocating current eating fad the Atkins Diet might have people believe, potatoes are already nutritious; but SCRI is, exploring different ways in which they might be made even more so.
Bradshaw says: “For example, we're debating, amongst ourselves and with nutritional experts, whether it's desirable to select for higher levels of Vitamin C content, or if increased levels of carotenoids are desirable.” Similarly the institute has made significant inroads into identifying novel potato flavoured compounds and how potato texture may be enhanced.
“Also, although we don't have a starch industry in this country, we are thinking about the possibily of modified starches for the future. A number of groups around the world are interested in using potatoes to produce pharmacueticals ñ not something we're actively involved in at the moment, but a possible area for the future. One of the main reasons we've launched the product innovation centre is to focus our ideas and engage with all the relevant end users.” He adds that potatoes more suited for production in the arid conditions of developing countries could be another area of investigation.
As well as being the source of many internationally bred mainstream varieties ñ the best known probably being the Pentland series, including Pentland Dell, Javelin and Crown ñ SCRI is also behind the development of novel potato types.
“We have a lot of people knocking on our door saying please breed us a variety that will have novel appeal in the supermarket,” says Bradshaw.
Three such cultivars came about recently as an advantageous spin-off from SCRI's breeding programmes to develop long-day adapted South American Phureja varieties ñ and a good example of the knock-on developments the centre will stimulate. Originally brought in to widen the gene pool of resistance available to its scientists, SCRI realised that Phurejas could be developed as products in their own right for niche markets. Inca Sun, for example, was UK national listed in 2001 and launched by Marshalls last September. The variety, along with the Phureja Inca Dawn, is also being aimed at the home garden sector. Meanwhile, the wide range of different flavours and textures inherent in Phurejas ñ including the likes of Purple Star with its patterned flesh ñ and their fast-cooking properties, are attracting attention from processors.
These, and all SCRI's ongoing developments have been brought neatly together under the auspices of the potato product innovation centre. “End user relevance and knowledge transfer have always been important to us,” says Bradshaw, “but the centre gives more focus and impetus to what we're already doing, taking it forward and hopefully making us more competitive.”
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