London (8th
September, 2006) – When, earlier this year, the German agro-biotechnology
company BASF Plant Science sought permission in Ireland to test GM potatoes
with improved resistance to late blight, one might have expected joy throughout
the land.
After all, potato late blight, a very nasty and damaging fungal disease, has
played an important part in Irish history. It was a major contributor to the
Great Irish Famine of 1845-7 when the peasant population, largely dependent
for their food on potatoes and milk, starved and a million of them died. Another
million emigrated, mainly to North America. It was the largest ever Irish
migration; in some ways the country took more than a century to recover (1).
One might have expected everyone in Ireland to remember and be glad of a new
and effective way of combating the disease.
One would have been wrong. Like their fellows all round the world, the Irish
anti-GM brigade and their allies with related sectional interests appear not
to be joyful people. Instead, they howled with anguish – so loudly,
indeed, that the Irish authorities, as authorities so often do in such circumstances,
imposed such onerous conditions on the proposed test that there was not sufficient
time for the company to comply in the current growing season (2). They withdrew
for 2006, promising to return in 2007.
Control of potato blight traditionally relied on copper-based fungicides such
as Bordeaux mixture (consisting of copper sulphate and calcium oxide). Copper
is potentially phytotoxic and has been superseded by modern systemic fungicides
which move within the plant and can both protect and eradicate existing infections.
These fungicides are much more specific in their mode of action although resistance
can develop quickly. However, copper compounds, as inorganic as they come,
continue to be used in “organic” agriculture because nothing else
will help and practitioners of the organic art would not wish to use the modern
systemic fungicides, even if they are the products of real organic chemistry.
Far-sighted people, biotechnologists and geneticists, realised that it might
be possible to move a natural fungal resistance trait found in a wild potato
into food potatoes in order to obtain resistance to late blight.
Following their temporary withdrawal from Ireland, BASF Plant Science announced
in August 2006 that they were to seek permission to run trials of such GM-potatoes
in England, specifically in Cambridgeshire and Derbyshire (3). In the UK,
the disease currently results in 5-10% of the potato yield being lost each
year despite the use of fungicides. Losses resulting from crop damage caused
by late blight are estimated to be up to £50 million a year, with an
additional £20 million spent annually on fungicides to protect the crop
from the disease.
Similar trials have been conducted in Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands.
Svaloef Weibull, the Swedish company undertaking the trials together with
BASF, earlier developed their own high amylose GM-potato, the cultivation
of which was approved for the production of starch for paper, not for human
consumption (4).
We will have to wait to see if BASF is successful with its UK application
but in the meantime there have been interesting consumer and farmer reactions.
Both the Cambridge Evening News and the Derbyshire Evening Telegraph
ran open polls on whether or not the trials should be run; both polls seemed
to be open for 2-3 days. In Cambridge the result was about 56% “no”
to 44% “yes”; in Derbyshire it was the other way about, at about
52% “yes” and 48% “no”. The public in both areas appeared
to be evenly divided; there was not too much evidence of the oft-repeated
anti-GM campaigner claims that “the British public have overwhelmingly
rejected GM”.
Farmers Weekly Interactive also ran a poll on "GM potato field
trials - good or bad idea?" The poll was open from about August 24th
until September 1st. In the morning of the 25th the result was “Great
= 64%, Big mistake = 36%”. So it continued for several days before suddenly
reversing. Could it be that the opponents discovered the poll only after several
days and then marshalled their troops, some of them perhaps following the
old electoral adage of “vote early and vote often”? We shall probably
never know.
Sources:
1. Jim Deacon. The Microbial World: Potato blight - Phytophthora infestans
(http://helios.bto.ed.ac.uk/bto/microbes/blight.htm)
2. BASF Drops Plan to Test GM Potatoes in Ireland. Planet Ark (25.8.06)
(http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/36526/story.htm)
3. GM potatoes for UK 'in 10 years. BBC News (23.8.06) (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5277152.stm)
4. Paul Brown. Sweden approves GM potato crops. The Guardian (4.9.2004)
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,,1188926,00.html)
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