British scientists today claimed success in developing genetically modified potatoes that are resistant to blight, the biggest threat to one of the world's leading vegetable crop.
A three-year trial has shown that the genetically modified potatoes can thrive despite being exposed to late onset blight. The scientists boosted resistance of potatoes to late blight without deploying fungicides.
That disease has plagued farmers for generations and it triggered the Irish potato famine in the 1840s.
Approval from the European Union is needed before commercial cultivation of this GM crop can take place.
The research is published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
Potatoes are particularly vulnerable to late blight, a fungus-like organism that loves the damp and humid conditions that often occur during the growing season in Europe.
The speed with which this infection takes hold and the devastating impacts on the crop make it the number one threat to six million tonnes of potatoes produced in the UK each year, the BBC reported.
Farmers have to be continuously on their guard and need to spray up to 15 times a season to protect against blight.
As part of an EU-wide investigation into the potential for biotechnology to protect crops, scientists at the John Innes Centre and the Sainsbury Laboratory began a trial with blight-resistant potatoes in 2010.
The researchers added a gene to Desiree potatoes, from a wild South American relative, that helps the plant turn on its natural defences to fight off blight.
The scientists involved say that the use of techniques to add extra genes was crucial in developing a plant resistant to the blight.
"Breeding from wild relatives is laborious and slow, and by the time a gene is successfully introduced into a cultivated variety the late blight pathogen may already have evolved the ability to overcome it," said Prof Jonathan Jones, of the Sainsbury Laboratory.
"With new insights into both the pathogen and its potato host, we can use GM technology to tip the evolutionary balance in favour of potatoes and against late blight," Jones said.
In 2012, the third year of the trial, all the non-GM potatoes became infected with late blight while the modified vegetables remained fully resistant.
There was also a difference in yield, with the GM variety producing double the amount of tubers.
One area the scientists cannot comment on is the taste, as they were barred from eating the GM variety.
Critics of GM crops said that no matter how big the scale of the environmental benefits, they believe that consumers will not be interested.
"Is anyone really going to grow, sell or buy genetically modified potatoes?" said Liz O'Neil, director of GM Freeze.
Potato is the world's fourth-largest food crop, following maize, wheat and rice. Nearly a third of the world's potatoes are harvested in China and India.
