Managing the disease costs the industry an estimated £30 million a year and its effects are felt throughout the food chain from the grower, packer, and processor to the end-user. And with the annual consumption for potatoes currently sitting at around 104 kilograms per capita, overcoming the blight issue is paramount to the continual growth of the industry.
However finding a management strategy to minimise the disease and reduce the effects of potato blight continues to be a challenge for the £700m British potato industry. The British Potato Council (BPC) co-ordinates the national broad-based research and development (R&D) programme, with an annual budget of less than £5m.
Funding for R&D comes through partnership programmes with the British government (Defra and SEEDRAD) and private potato seed companies. As well as providing cutting-edge research, the seed companies are foremost in ensuring the research is adoptable for growers and processors.
Ewen Brierley, manager of the BPC R&D programme, says: “Ultimately our project outcomes have to be based on commercial reality. The management plans we develop and support need to be sustainable within the industry, and therefore not adversely affect yield and quality.”
Despite a tight R&D budget, the British potato industry through multi-organisational co-operation has developed innovative technologies, bred exciting new varieties and is in the throws of enhancing industry competitiveness.
The four broad areas of R&D currently in action are; the breeding of new pest and disease resistant varieties with improved taste, colouring and storability traits; environmentally sustainable pest and disease control; cost-effective growing and production techniques; and innovative storage and transport solutions.
Of the four investment areas, varietal development is possibly the most important component of any R&D programme. Developing and trialling new varieties through conventional and biotechnological methods are vital to any successful breeding programme.
NIAB and the Scottish Crop Research Institute (SCRI) undertake most of the varietal development within the UK potato sector. With a primary focus on starch metabolism - engineering a different or new form of starch - the research also examines the tolerance levels to pathogens and pests. SCRI holds a vast collection of potato varieties, in which there is particular interest in extracting varieties with a natural immunity to potato blight.
The UK’s seed companies jointly grow 12,500 hectares of seed potatoes a year, with an average harvest of around 400,000 tonnes. These seed companies are important players in the potato-breeding programme. One of the UK’s largest integrated seed producers - the Higgins Group - has a primary crossing and progeny-testing programme. The target markets for new varieties are the processing and export markets.
Higgins technical director Graeme Byers says: “We select parent varieties, make crosses, plant true seed, test progeny in our glass houses and field trial material for several generations.”
The Higgins focus is based on developing varieties that perform better for growers, and improve factory yields and quality. It specifically targets; fry performance in storage at low temperatures, reducing the usage of sprout suppressants, and developing varieties which perform well in high field temperatures for sales into the developing markets of the new world.
Varieties listed by Higgins include: “Horizon” (developed for the UK crisping market and for sales in the export market), and “Pearl” (a salad type). Higgins also holds the Dutch variety “Smile”, which is being commercialised in Britain.
The UK organic sector is also a keen participant in potato breeding programmes. Faced with a mandate to protect its industry from any form of biotechnology, the major research body for the organic sector, the Henry Doubleday Research Association (HDRA), has focused on trialling new, established and heritage varieties of potatoes in the organic system. Yield, speed of emergence, ground cover and disease resistance (particularly to blight) is the major performance traits sort after by organic growers.
Simon Harlock, research officer, HDRA, says: “The outcome of this research is to enable seed suppliers make better use of existing genetic resources for organic systems.”
Bioseleck UK, in collaboration with Agrico, a Dutch based farmer and breeder co-operative, has trialled and released several new organic varieties that are now grown in the mainstream British potato sector - Estima, Wilja, Premiere and Sante.
The Agrico organic programme is focused on developing and selecting varieties which have blight disease resistance, are of even size and have top eating qualities. New varieties from this programme are the early variety Cosmos, and Appel - a long storage variety with little need for cold storage.
Laurence Hasson, manager of Bioseleck UK, says: “There are some new varieties coming along. Novello - a long oval, light fleshed potato with good blight resistance - is now registered on the national list for commercial production in 2005.”
Not all new varieties are British bred. There is significant interest in sourcing overseas varieties, which suit British conditions and have disease resistant traits. A keen importer is Pseedco, which has a number of North American varieties due to be listed in the next few years.
Alister Redpath, chief executive of Pseedco, says: “Breeding British varieties would be useful for business, but there are also great opportunities for seeking existing varieties and trialling them in Britain. To-date Pseedco has imported varieties from North America which are just out of quarantine and are now ready for trials.”
Controlling pests and diseases are becoming more difficult with a universal focus to reduce synthetic chemical usage in the production of food, while maintaining a high quality and regular product.
Delivering blemish free and regular sized produce is the biggest challenge facing the organic sector. Without the luxury of artificial chemicals throughout the production chain, the organic sector has enthusiastically sought alternative control methods.
While rapidly seeking newer, hardier varieties, the organic sector is also keenly pursuing biological control and innovative cultural methods to beat the persistent and industry-dominating pests and diseases. The two biggest disease problems for the organic sector are Rhizoctonia solani - normally know as black scurf - and potato blight.
Hasson says: “Supermarkets will not accept any more than 20 per cent scarring from black scurf, if any at all. The scurf usually can not be seen until the potatoes have been washed which can result in high costs from packers, and heavy losses for growers.”
For organic farmers Rhizoctonia solani is worse than blight as it can live in the soil indefinitely and will attack the crop again the following year, effecting new growth and causing irregular tuber shapes.
Bioseleck UK has been working on a solution to Rhizoctonia solani for a number of years. One technique - the haulm pulling method - is currently being trialled in Britain with reasonable success.
Hasson explains: “The haulm (vine) is separated from the potato in the ground by a machine (developed in Holland). The scurf bacteria lives in the stem of the potato, so the aim of the machine is to pull the haulm away from the potato with minimum stress to the plant, thereby preventing the bacteria moving down into the potato.”
In other words by extracting the vine from the potato there is a reduced risk of contamination.
A Dutch company is also working with Bioseleck UK in developing a seed inoculated pathogen for the control of Rhizoctonia solani. The initial results are positive and suggest an effective biological control, however further trials over the next two to three years will need to be undertaken before a wide spread industry programme can be introduced.
If results continue to be successful, the seed inoculated pathogen control of Rhizoctonia solani will have a significantly positive impact on the potato industry as a whole.
“It is important the organic industry has significant success with these two cultural methods. The potato industry is tough for everyone, but in particular it is very hard for the organic sector to achieve the unrealistic aesthetic demands of the supermarkets in commercial quantities,” says Hasson.
Other interesting work being carried out in the pest and disease area includes the PCR technology developed by Higgins. The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technology identifies disease levels on seed stocks, which enables the minimisation of further contamination risk. The dedicated PCR laboratory carries out assessments on hundreds of seed stocks each year.
Date-Smart is Pseedco’s hottest new technology. Date-Smart technology is an innovative system that allows the tuber initiation in the seed crop to take place either earlier (Date-Smart Prolific) or later (Date-Smart Bold) than would be the case in conventional seed crops. Date-Smart is in its third year of testing with great results.
Redpath says: “By shifting the tuber initiation date relative to the date on which the ware grower would be planting the crop, Pseedco is now able to grow seed which produces more stems leading to more smaller tubers - of benefit to the salad and punnet producers - or seed which produces fewer stems leading to fewer, larger tubers - benefiting the early-baker grower.”
Warwick HRI leads the potato R&D programme in storage issues. The potato industry in Britain is dominated by the usage of in-storage sprout suppressants. Research into developing an effective control from the natural hormone ABA that inhibits bud sprouting has been ongoing for a number of years.
Skin quality is also an area within the storage component of R&D, which Warwick HRI is researching. The potato industry losses millions of pounds each year due to loss of sales, markdowns and waste because of poorly set skins, which allow in disease, and unsightly blemishes.
Richard Napier, crop Improvement and biotechnology at Warwick HRI, says: “We are trying to discover the biochemistry leading to skin setting and how watering and other field conditions contribute to this issue.”
Investment in R&D is the backbone of any industry; enabling new technologies to challenge old methods, establish more efficient production practices, seek cheaper and more environmentally appropriate storage and transport methods, and perhaps most importantly breed tasty, pest and disease resistant produce.
Research into more environmentally appropriate cultural and production methods will reduce the pressure from supermarkets, and consumers to meet often challenging and costly assurance standards.
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