First GM potato variety to fight blight might be cultivated in the UK

The first potato genetically modified (GM) for resistance to blight, might soon be grown in the UK.

The genetic modification initiative was a three-year project that saw genes from a wild South American potato inserted into a normal potato variety called Desiree.

According to scientists, it was fully resistant to blight, caused by the organism Phytophthora infestans, which destroyed up to half of British crops in a bad year.

The disease was responsible for the Irish potato famine of 1845 and remains the greatest enemy of potato farmers, costing them £60 million a year.

However, critics say tampering with genes in crops to create 'Frankenfoods' could damage natural ecosystems and affect human health.

They say shoppers would never knowingly buy GM products.

According to the latest research, published today in a Royal Society journal, 100 per cent of non-GM plants in a trial were infected by blight, while the new variety was fully resistant.

Potatoes are highly vulnerable to late blight - a fungus-like organism that is particularly well adapted to the damp and humid conditions that often occurred during the growing season in Europe.

The rapid pace at which infection spreads and the devastating impacts on the crop make it the number one threat to 6 million tonnes of potatoes produced in the UK each year.

Farmers cannot afford to lower their guard and spray fungicides up to 15 times a season to protect against the disease.

With the initiative, part of a EU-wide investigation into the potential for biotechnology for protection of crops, scientists at the John Innes Centre and the Sainsbury Laboratory started a trial with blight-resistant potatoes in 2010; the trials have now been running for three years.

The researchers added a gene to Desiree potatoes, from a wild South American relative, that helped the plant turn on its natural defences for fighting off the blight.

According to the scientists, the use of techniques to add extra genes was crucial for the development of the plant's resistance to the blight.

BBC reported professor Jonathan Jones of the Sainsbury Laboratory, the lead author of the research paper,who said breeding from wild relatives was laborious and slow, and by the time a gene was successfully introduced into a cultivated variety the late blight pathogen might already have evolved the ability to overcome it.