Durably resistant potatoes with wild potato genes offer 80% reduction in chemical control:
A research project into the development of potatoes with sustainable resistance against phytophthora via genetic modification with genes from wild potato varieties and good resistance management (DuRPh) has concluded with a scientific publication on the research results. The Wageningen UR scientists indicated that their approach was successful in developing potato plants which require 80% less chemical control.
The potato is the third food crop and offers a relatively high yield and valuable food per hectare. Global potato cultivation is, however, under threat from the pathogen Phytophthora infestans. Farmers who can afford to do so spray their crops against the pathogen with chemicals up to 15 times a year, which is both expensive and harmful to the environment. Farmers without the means for chemical control lose a large part of their yield in some years as a result of the disease.
...
The scientists mapped scores of resistance genes from wild potatoes of which nearly half were 'cloned' so that they could be transformed to existing potato varieties as single genes or in sets of two or three. After the scientists had determined that they could actually make susceptible potato varieties resistant, these potato plants were then multiplied to provide sufficient potatoes for research on trial fields.The resistant potatoes were studied in the field in various ways. In small 'monitoring plots' they also were used to study which types of phytophthora were present on the land. In larger demonstration fields, visitors from the sector and the general public could see the success of the attempt to make vulnerable potatoes resistant to phytophthora for four consecutive years.
Your fries are safe.
Durable Late Blight Resistance in Potato Through Dynamic Varieties Obtained by Cisgenesis: Scientific and Societal Advances in the DuRPh Project (DOI: 10.1007/s11540-015-9312-6)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 24 2016, @04:43AM
English/edit fail. Bad headline.
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Thursday March 24 2016, @05:06AM
It's resistant to durably, quite clearly. Wake me when it's doubly durably resistant; now that will be highly undurably.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 24 2016, @05:14AM
Just say "ruggedised."
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Thursday March 24 2016, @05:15AM
"Your fries are safe."
Err... Chips?
Calf fries, Turkey fries, My fries...
:-)
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 24 2016, @05:26AM
A wild potato met a wild peanut [soylentnews.org] and they had a blast. "Sure enough, nine months later, out popped a Baby Ruth."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Thursday March 24 2016, @05:37AM
I believe this highlights a lot of our concern about patenting and ownership of genetics/seeds ( Monsanto ).
What happens when we get monocultured crops as our primary food supply and either the bugs or some hostile entity finds a way to infect the whole shebang with some plague?
Or if some private party develops a plague, while using existing law to protect their interest in a plague-resistant gene that they developed along with the plague?
( Of course, the fact they were the ones that developed the plague in the first place is a highly guarded secret... kinda like who shot JFK or did the World Trade Tower thing. )
I have my doubts our Congress would turn against their own kind and exact this from a company with the same indifference they exact a human life from a draftee - or took a bunch of people's homes for the benefit of a profit-taker as in Kelo vs. New London, as if dressing up in a fancy suit makes absurd misuse of authority "respectable".
N.B. I have had a sour attitude toward Monsanto ever since Grandpa and them got into a riff over who had the right to plant seeds they grew themselves on their own land. Just because a neighbor's pollen wafted onto Grandpa's crop made Monsanto's patented gene show up in Grandpa's crop - Monsanto seemed to have the right to force Grandpa to submit to them, but Grandpa could not sue Monsanto for altering his crop - which was for internal farm use anyway - as gramps wasn't a big enough grower to attract the big guys... he had cows, horses, pigs, chickens, and other assorted farm animals to feed. On the farm, corn is almost a universal animal food. Darned near everything but the cat will eat it. But the cat eats well with all the corn around. Mice. That were trying to eat the corn.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 24 2016, @04:12PM
That's the word that comes to mind every time talk of food staples comes up. Pretty much all of our vegetable foods are monocultures today. The earth is a germ warfare battleground. It only takes one slightly mutated something-or-other to infect ALL of our potatoes, or tomoatoes, or wheat, or whatever. If the huge monoculture of potatoes is wiped out in a single season, we'll still have other potatoes from which to start - but getting them into mass production will take time.
If instead of a single monotulture, we had a dozen widely varying cultivars in production, a blight might take out one or two varieties nationwide - but all the rest would produce.
What did Grandma say? "Don't put all your eggs in one basket"?
Of course, Monsanto really doesn't give a damn how many people might miss meals, or possibly even starve, if the crops fail. All they care about is getting their cut for all the produce harvested.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Thursday March 24 2016, @09:45AM
My Father worked in the field of plant pathology (potatoes mainly) and was a university lecturer on the subject. He regularly pointed out that we'd been "cloning" potatoes for generations. Here a tip, if you take a potato and cut it up so that each piece contains an "eye", then plant each piece, then congratulations, you have cloned the potato.
What the scientists have done here is the same as they've been doing for a very long time, by cross breeding useful breeds of potato with wild breeds, then cloning the offspring and producing a few generations of the new breed, to get a large sample group with which to expose to the desired pathogen.
So this is not GM any more than good animal husbandry is interference in the natural process to select desired traits.
Just like we get a yearly Flu vaccine; there are teams of scientists constantly working on breeding new strains of potato which is resistant to blight. 80% resistance does seem like a nice large number though. I'll have to send on a link to this article to him to get his opinion on just how big a deal this particular case study is.
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Thursday March 24 2016, @04:36PM
Well said.
When it mentioned the potatoes were 'cloned' I almost sprayed my coffee over my keyboard. I have been 'cloning' potatoes for over five decades now, and I learned from my father, who learned from his father, who learned from... :-)
Who knew that farmers secretly withheld all this 'new' cloning technology from the rest of us. It's a conspiracy, I tell you! No wonder these nefarious farmers are getting hush-money(subsidies) from the gov't., as they are in it too! ;-)
"Yestidday, I couldn't spell Agricultural Cloning Technician, but today I are one!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 25 2016, @03:14AM
Would it have been better if they had said "vegetatively propagated" or if they had explicitly said "cut up and planted"?