A genetically modified potato with improved tuber quality and resistance to late blight disease has progressed successfully through the latest stage of trails, announced the Sainsbury Laboratory.

The field trails follow successful lab experiments to modify Maris Piper potatoes with late blight resistance genes from wild relatives of potato called Solanum americanum and Solanum venturii.

To improve tuber quality, the modified Maris Piper lines also have genes switched off – or “silenced” – to reduce browning upon bruise damage and to avoid cold-induce sweetening (which is the accumulation of reducing sugars during cold storage that causes blackening when potatoes and cooked at high temperatures).

The Sainsbury Laboratory was granted permission earlier this year by DEFRA to proceed with three years of field trials in controlled conditions.

These trials in Norfolk this summer were set up to test if the genetic improvements were without side-effects for yield or lower performance in the field. They were funded by a BBSRC Super Follow-on Funding Grant.

“We have identified a plant that looks fine in terms of yield – comparable to wild type Maris Piper – but with all the benefits of blight resistance, reduced bruising and lower levels of reducing sugars. The really exciting thing about this trial is that our line also shows resistance to tuber blight – the same pathogen that causes late blight can get into tubers and rot them. This will reduce losses in storage for potato growers,” explains Professor Jonathan Jones of the Sainsbury Laboratory.

The next phase trials funded by BBSRC, a part of UK Research and Innovation, will see 12 more lines go forward to more extensive yield trials before the GM Maris Piper can be taken forward for regulatory assessment and commercialization.

The Sainsbury Laboratory will continue with NIAB, Cambridge for further field evaluation of these new lines of potatoes.

UK farmers spend an estimated GBP60m a year on agrichemical applications to control potato late blight, which if left unchecked can destroy a crop within two weeks. By using natural genetic diversity found in the wider potato family and introducing it into modern potato cultivar, farmers would have to rely less on agrichemicals which are costly and cause environmental concern.

European regulations on GM crops are complex but with the UK’s future in relation to Europe still to be confirmed, the project will press ahead with further trials.

“The future regulatory framework is imponderable. But we have shown that the technology works. These improvements were made in Maris Piper, the most planted UK potato variety. If you want to use our genetic knowledge to solve problems in the field, you need to so in the most preferred variety,” added Jones. “I would urge people to support this technology, and not to create obstacles to using it to solve real problems in the field in a more environmentally sustainable way. We all want to see a more sustainable agriculture, and to achieve that goal, we need to replace chemistry with genetics for disease and pest control,” he concluded.

The research has previously been funded by the BBSRC via a Horticulture and Potato Initiative (HAPI) grant, and is in partnership with Biopotatoes Ltd., UK and Simplot Plant Sciences in the USA.