Bangladeshi scientists have successfully field-tested a genetically modified potato resistant to late blight.
After the last trial is over in February, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) will approach regulators for approval of the RB (blight resistant) gene-infused potato. BARI officials are calling the GM potato the farmers’ answer to late blight once it’s released.
With an annual output of nine million tonnes, Bangladesh is the seventh largest potato-producing nation in the world. Its farmers spray 500 tonnes of fungicide each year to protect the major tuber crop.
Late blight, responsible for the 19th century Irish potato famine that led to one million deaths from starvation, still affects more than three million hectares of potato crops globally and causes economic losses estimated at US$2.75 billion a year, according to the International Potato Center (CIP).
CIP is helping Uganda develop a GM potato. Other developing nations, including India and Indonesia, are also working on developing blight resistant strains of GM potatoes.
In Bangladesh, BARI is developing late blight resistant potato in cooperation with the Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project II (ABSPII), a USAID-funded consortium of public and private sector institutions supporting scientists, regulators, extension workers, farmers and the general public in developing countries to make informed decisions about agricultural biotechnology.
Breeders involved in developing the GM potato since 2006 at BARI said the RB gene was taken from wild potato varieties and was infused into a potato variety called Katahdin in the United States. They said it was crossed with Diamant and Cardinal, two popular potato varieties in Bangladesh.
Md Abu Kawochar, scientific officer of BARI’s Tuber Crops Research Centre, said, “Since 2006 we’ve exhausted all trials from laboratory to greenhouse to field tests to multi-location tests. Now the regulatory trial is going on in six sites in the country and all these have shown positive results.”
ABSPII officials say it will soon be up to the Bangladeshi regulators to decide when they would release the variety. When that happens, the new blight resistant potato will be the second commercially released GM food crop in South Asia after Bt Brinjal, which was also released by Bangladesh in 2013.
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