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UK – MORE ON GM POTATO RESEARCH
Leading Norfolk scientists plea over GM technology
Michael Pollitt, Eastern Daily Press (UK), June 9, 2010
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A leading scientist at a world-renowned Norfolk food research centre has said that it's time 'to grow up' over the possible beneficial impact of GM technology.
The comments of Professor Jonathan Jones, group leader at the John Innes Centre's Sainsbury laboratory, come at the start of a Norwich GM potato trial that looks to use the controversial technology to boost food worldwide production.
And a top Norfolk potato grower Tony Bambridge said that farmers could be planting genetically-modified crops within five years if given the chance.
Prof Jones, who is leading a three-year project involving potatoes with GM blight resistance, said that farmers in Europe must be given access to this latest technology.
"We've got the tools at hand but our farmers can't use them," he said.
It was time for the GM debate, which has been raging for 15 years to move on.
"We have to grow up. It is time to take the challenge forward," said Prof Jones, who is group leader at the JIC's Sainsbury Laboratory.
The potato trial was the latest example of GM technology, which has been funded by more than £1m by the taxpayer, being exported to help farmers in the United States.
While potato farmers in England might have to wait until 2020 before they could have plant GM potatoes, growers in America were about to reap the benefit.
"The genes we have identified have been licensed to a US potato company and these genes will be used sooner in the US than in Europe," said Prof Jones. "The genes are at our disposal, we could actually do that today," he added.
And scientists at the University of East Anglia, who have identified a resistant plant to powdery mildew, also funded by the taxpayer, have exported the technology to help US pumpkin growers protect their crops.
Prof Jones said that the GM trials could help to curb late blight, which costs an estimated £3.5bn in loss and damage around the world. "It devastates crops from Indonesia to the United States from Africa to South America, wherever potatoes are grown," he added.
He was speaking as six small genetically-modified potato plots, each about the size of a pool table, have been planted on land owned by the John Innes Foundation at Colney, near Norwich.
It is the first GM field trial to be planted in the 100-year history of the JIC, which is regarded as one of the world's leading plant science hubs.
"We've taken a resistance gene from a wild potato. We're working with two different blight resistance genes from two different wild potatoes," he said.
A total of 192 GM potatoes, which were planted about six weeks ago, were been grown in a greenhouse by colleagues including Stephen Foster. The eight-inch plants, all of the same variety, Desiree, were transplanted into six blocks, each of four rows of eight to test their ability to withstand blight in natural conditions.
The trial crop, which is surrounded by conventional potatoes, has been planted behind a 3m high-security fence with arc lights. Once the trial ends in early September, the potatoes will be lifted and destroyed as part of the official consent from Defra and will not enter the food chain.
Special seed potato grower Mr Bambridge, of Marsham, near Aylsham, said that the industry should have access to the latest technology. "If we don't, then we're going to be on the back foot. It will probably happen elsewhere in the world first."
"If we want to feed the world, the potato is one of the most efficient crops producing a good quality foodstuff in terms of kg of food per hectare. It is a fantastic plant," he added.
Prof Jones, said: "At a time when the public purse is under such strain and in a world with 12 million growers of GM crops and more than 250m acres, we're having spend £20,000 of taxpayers' money having to protect 200 GM potatoes plus all the other costs of security. It is absolutely mad."
Mr Bambridge, who grows about 300 acres of seed potatoes, said that the estimated cost of controlling blight could be as much as £60m a year for Britain's farmers.
In the mid-19th century, blight was directly responsible for the Irish Potato Famine when an estimated two million people died of starvation. "We take food security for granted," said Prof Jones.
Friends of the Earth's food campaigner Kirtana Chandrasekaran, said yesterday: "The Government is wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers' money by forging ahead with unnecessary and unpopular GM crop trials, which threaten local farmers with contamination."
GM potato to reduce agrochemicals
- SainsburyLab, YouTube, June 7, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1hC5mxLkIc
A field trial of GM potatoes is being planted to test whether genes from wild relatives can successfully protect commercial potato varieties from late blight -- the disease that caused the Irish potato famine -- without the need to spray fungicides.
British farmers spray on average 15 times a year to protect against potato late blight.
"We have isolated genes from two different wild potato species that confer blight resistance," said Professor Jonathan Jones from the Sainsbury Laboratory on Norwich Research Park. "Similar genes are found in all plants, and we are now testing whether these ones work in a field environment to protect a commercial potato variety, Desiree, against this destructive potato disease."
Cultivated potatoes originate from South America, and scientists have been screening species from this region to identify genes that give the plants resistance to late blight. They identified two genes and have grown two separate lines of potato to test each gene. The two sets of plants are now ready to be planted out to see if the genes work against races of late blight that circulate naturally in the UK.
The wild South American species are inedible and produces tiny tubers, so scientists sieved out just the genes of interest from the 30,000 or so in their genomes.
This video was filmed over a period of a few months to show how the commercial potato variety receives the protective gene.
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