A genetically modified potato variety, designed to have resistance to devastating plant disease blight, has successfully made it through its first year of field trials.
The trial, conducted by The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, involves incorporating late blight resistant genes from a wild potato relative into a cultivated Maris Piper potato.
“The first year of the Maris Piper field trial has worked brilliantly”, said Professor Jonathan Jones of The Sainsbury Laboratory. “We’ve observed resistance to late blight in all the lines.”
Late blight in potatoes, which is estimated to causes global crop losses of £3.5 billion, can wipe out whole fields of potato plants. At present, crops all over the world must have multiple treatments with fungicide to combat the pathogen and ensure a good harvest.
The potato modification involved the addition of three genes that enable late blight detection. After the first year of trials, scientists observed a marked improvement in late blight resistance.
The plants have been scored for resistance, and the results of the trial will be published following further field trials in future years.
Because the resistant lines carry three different added detection genes, it will be more difficult for the pathogen to evade detection and infect the crop. In effect, the potatoes will have more lines of defence against the disease.
Jones said: “We have the technology to solve the problems that affect many people’s livelihoods. Crop diseases reduce yields and require application of agrichemicals, and this field trial shows that a more sustainable agriculture is possible.”
In a recent interview, Jones told FPJ: “Diversity is not enough. We also need to breed plants... If GM plants could be brought forward by the public sector, I think there would be a great deal less alarm.”
Alongside resistance to blight, in field trials next year the modified Maris Piper will also carry traits that improve tuber quality. Two genes will be switched off in the plant, a process known as silencing.
This means that the new crop will be less prone to bruise damage, making it easier to ensure the potatoes meet customer quality specifications.
The second trait, caused by silencing an invertase gene, leads to lower levels of reducing sugars on storage at low temperatures, which will reduce blackening and formation of acrylamide when potatoes are cooked at high temperatures – for instance when cooking chips or crisps.
This work is being carried out on a BBSRC-funded Horticulture and Potato Initiative (HAPI) grant, in partnership with Simplot Plant Sciences in the USA and with BioPotatoes Ltd in the UK.
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