£3.5m for potato disease research

Scientists of the University of Dundee will lead a £3.5m investigation into potato blight, which was responsible for the Irish potato famine and problems across the globe.

Blight costs the potato industry more than £3bn a year due to crop failure and the cost of fungicides.

Researchers at the universities of Dundee and Warwick, along with those at the Scottish Crop Research Institute, will study how microbes cause blight.

They want to find new strategies to control or prevent crop loss.

The researchers will examine how molecules called effectors, from the potato pathogen Phytophthora infestans, are able to cause late blight.

They will also investigate how other effectors cause downy mildew, another significant problem in potato crops.

The funding for the project has come from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.