" GM " Potato trials!

[SimonJFoster]

I think it is a great use of technology and could save alot of wastage in the potato world. Will you do more videos as the experiment goes on?

Thanks!

We do indeed intend to do more videos. We'd like to be able to show exactly what happens throughout this whole process so that we can help to demystify some of it. If there is a good incidence of blight this year we'll be able to show just how well our plants stand up against it. I say hopefully, but I appreciate that us hoping for blight is certainly not what everyone else growing potatoes (me included) will be hoping for! Let's hope for a very localised blight epidemic.

[tattieman]

Can you not just inoculate them in the field with blight and see how they stand up.

I can imagine this technology would be a revolution for the home gardener who has very little defence against blight.

When you see the process that is involved there is nothing I would be scared of.

We would be able to keep all of our varieties just the way we like them but with the added gene to protect from blight.

Does the gene improve tuber blight resistance or is it just in the foliage?

[SarzWix]

It wouldn't be a revolution in my garden, because I wouldn't buy them... If it becomes impossible to grow spuds in this country without gene-fiddling, then I'll grow something else. Swede & carrot mash anyone?

[SimonJFoster]

Can you not just inoculate them in the field with blight and see how they stand up.

I can imagine this technology would be a revolution for the home gardener who has very little defence against blight.

When you see the process that is involved there is nothing I would be scared of.

We would be able to keep all of our varieties just the way we like them but with the added gene to protect from blight.

Does the gene improve tuber blight resistance or is it just in the foliage?

We could inoculate them with blight, but we already know from lab tests that the plants are resistant to all the strains of blight that we maintain in the lab. What we wish to do now is expose the plants to all of the local blight population to make sure that they stand up in a field situation.

We are pretty confident as 70-80% of the UK blight is currently made up of a strain known as Blue 13. We know that our gene is effective against this strain. It's the unknowns we want to check against.

We are checking tuber blight resistant at the moment and initial results suggest that the resistance is also active in the tubers. To be honest though, the resistance is very effective at resisting foliar blight to the extent that there would probably not be sufficient blight spores available to cause tuber blight.

[SimonJFoster]

It wouldn't be a revolution in my garden, because I wouldn't buy them... If it becomes impossible to grow spuds in this country without gene-fiddling, then I'll grow something else. Swede & carrot mash anyone?

I'm a little confused as to why you see GM as "gene-fiddling". What is breeding if not gene-fiddling on huge scale? Potatoes and the swedes and carrots in your alternative mash have been fiddled with by man in much the same way.

Breeding involves crossing 2 plants, thereby transferring 50% of the genes from each parent into the progeny. This is what has happened with all of the potatoes (in fact any vegetable) that are available in the supermarkets, including the blight resistant Sarpo varieties. The majority of the potatoes that have some blight resistance were at some point crossed with a South American wild potato relative. Now this is a potato that you have never eaten, you don't know even whether it is safe to eat it. The resulting offspring will have been backcrossed to the original cultivated potato parent, but this will not remove all of the genes from the South American parent. Yet you would eat these without knowing what genes (in addition to the blight resistance) were retained from the South American parent.

What we have done with the GM potatoes is transfer the single gene from a South American potato that gives blight resistance into a cultivated variety. Precision breeding. This way you can be sure that none of the other genes from the South American potato are retained.

[Hilary B]

Breeding is selection, very different from adding in genes from outside.

As I said before, spuds are one of the few things where there is little or no environmental risk, which is my main objection to the idea, but I still don't find the notion appealing. If there is a related species with the genes you want, how about simply cross-breeding them, and then selecting?
If that wouldn't work, then the difference, both of type and degree, between selective breeding and gene-manipulation is obvious. If it would work, then gene-manipulation isn't necessary.

[SarzWix]

Hilary, you said it much better than I could.
It's my opinion that just because you can do something in a lab, doesn't necessarily mean that you should. Breeding and selection might be a long-winded process, but at least it gives plenty of time to see if anything is going wrong...

Anyhoo, thankfully 'tis a free country and if I don't want to grow, or eat, something because it's method of production makes me uncomfortable, then I don't have to

[SimonJFoster]

Breeding is selection, very different from adding in genes from outside.

As I said before, spuds are one of the few things where there is little or no environmental risk, which is my main objection to the idea, but I still don't find the notion appealing. If there is a related species with the genes you want, how about simply cross-breeding them, and then selecting?
If that wouldn't work, then the difference, both of type and degree, between selective breeding and gene-manipulation is obvious. If it would work, then gene-manipulation isn't necessary.

Sorry if this comes across as sounding a little pedantic, but the difference between breeding and using GM technologies to add in a gene is in fact very small. Breeding is in fact precisely that, adding in genes from outside, it's the whole point of breeding.

As I mentioned in a previous post, it would have been possible to breed in the resistance from the wild South American potato. However, you would then have a potato which may not be acceptable to the majority of consumers or commercial processors. Using GM you can take an accepted variety and make it blight resistant without losing any other qualities.

The outcome is the same, a variety into which the blight resistance gene has been introduced. On one hand by breeding, on the other by GM. The major difference however is that by breeding you are also introducing other unknown genes into the potato, with GM you are introducing a single known gene. If you're worried about knowing what goes into the potato, then with GM you know precisely what is going in.

[SimonJFoster]

Anyhoo, thankfully 'tis a free country and if I don't want to grow, or eat, something because it's method of production makes me uncomfortable, then I don't have to

Excellent point. This all comes down to consumer choice. We have no intention of creating a situation in which it would be impossible to eat anything but GM spuds. Much in the same way, we would not want to be forced into a choice between either conventionally farmed and organic produce.

Giving consumers a choice between conventional, organic and GM would satisfy all. Unfortunately at the moment, for those who have no issue with GM, that choice is being denied to them.

By the way, organic potatoes is a concept I still can't reconcile given that copper sulphate is still an acceptable 'organic' method of controlling late blight

[zazen999]

I know you are only on a blight GM programme; but please don't forget that on here we are avid seed savers and swappers. Any technology that knowingly and deliberately knits into it's design the inability to save seed is going to upset the sharing community that generously shares it's seed round for others to grow and experience.

Until this ridiculous practice is removed from the central ethos of GM; I for one will never consider GM a positive move.

[zazen999]

By the way, organic potatoes is a concept I still can't reconcile given that copper sulphate is still an acceptable 'organic' method of controlling late blight

No it isn't.....

[SimonJFoster]

No it isn't.....

Has something changed recently then? Or do you mean that it's not necessarily acceptable to everyone.

As far as I was aware, according to the Soil Association, up to 6 kg/ha/year of total copper is permissible on organic land.

[SimonJFoster]

I know you are only on a blight GM programme; but please don't forget that on here we are avid seed savers and swappers. Any technology that knowingly and deliberately knits into it's design the inability to save seed is going to upset the sharing community that generously shares it's seed round for others to grow and experience.

Until this ridiculous practice is removed from the central ethos of GM; I for one will never consider GM a positive move.

And I for one am very glad that communities like this do exist and continue to ensure that heritage and other interesting lines are maintained. Commercial breeders do not always have the resources to do so and so seed savers and swappers perform an extremely valuable service in ensuring that the wide diversity of our plants is retained.

The so-called 'terminator' technology that meant that GM crops could not produce seed has in fact never been deployed in a GM crop. Certainly our potatoes DO NOT contain this.

Now, hybrid seed on the other hand....

[Bramble_killer]

I know you are only on a blight GM programme; but please don't forget that on here we are avid seed savers and swappers. Any technology that knowingly and deliberately knits into it's design the inability to save seed is going to upset the sharing community that generously shares it's seed round for others to grow and experience.

Until this ridiculous practice is removed from the central ethos of GM; I for one will never consider GM a positive move.

But that ridiculous practise exists with F1 seeds and many people still buy them. How is that different to GM crops?

Is the fear of something unknown worse than the knowledge of something that is terrible?

[SimonJFoster]

Just want to point out that I've not signed up here to convert everyone to GM or enter into arguments with anyone.

I noticed that this thread had a few people who seemed to be interested in our work and so thought I'd sign up to answer any questions people may have. GM is one of those topics that polarises people and I try to address any misconceptions about the technology where I can.

Obviously I'm not familiar with the community here so don't want to upset anyone. If I'm unwelcome then let me know.