SCRI: 'Spray-free' potato 'perfectly possible in 10 - 15 years'

Potato growers need no reminding that they now spend well in excess of £100 per acre keeping their crops disease and pest free through a hefty spray programme of nematicides, herbicides, fungicides and insecticides.

That is why they would be delighted with the suggestion of a "no-spray potato".

That possibility ought to be "perfectly possible in ten to 15 years"according to Professor Peter Gregory, director of the Scottish Crops Research Institute (SCRI), Invergowrie, who was speaking at a meeting in Inverurie last night.

Gregory said that with the recent unravelling of the genetics within potatoes and with the use of new breeding technology, then it should be possible to produce a potato that required no spray programme to keep it free from pests and diseases.

He said the snag was not on the breeding side, where massive advances had been made recently in identifying gene markers with resistance to problematic diseases such as nematodes and blight. Rather there was still political resistance to the genetic modification of plants.

There is still time to sort out the political position as, he assured his audience that there were no commercially available GM crops suitable for Scotland, with the possible exception of a variety of GM maize, which might attract dairy and livestock farmers. "There is no issue just now, but there will be soon,"he stated.

The potato is an ideal plant, as scientists already know a great deal about the genes of its wild relatives, many of which have pools of resistance in their genetic make-up.