Mar 4, 2010

Research Potato

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GM starch potatoes as a renewable raw material

Amflora - a potato for industrial applications.

In Europe, in the 2010 crop growing season a genetically modified potato can be cultivated. In this potato the composition of the starch has been altered so that it is better suited for certain industrial purposes. The Amflora potato was approved on 02.03.2010 by the EU Commission, 13 years after the first application for approval and after numerous scientific appraisals.

The starch in a conventional potato consists of two components - amylopectin and amylose. Both these components are of equal value in terms of human nutrition. However, in industrial processes they cannot be used together because they have different characteristics: usually, only the thickening properties of amylopectin are required, while the gelling amylose component is undesirable in many products and can interfere with certain processes. The chemical modification or separation of these two components is associated with increased consumption of energy and water.

Antisense strategy: blocking enzyme synthesis

Researchers at BASF Plant Science have now developed a new starch potato (under the brand name Amflora), which produces starch composed almost exclusively of amylopectin. Using the antisense strategy, they switched off the gene for the starch synthase enzyme, which is involved in the synthesis of amylose, by inserting a mirror image of the gene (‘antisense’) into the DNA of the potato. This blocks the information to synthesise the enzyme.

Field testing for environmental safety

The genetically modified amylopectin potato has already undergone several years of field trials to test yields, pest and disease resistance, and also to determine whether it is harmful to human and animal health or the environment. The field trials took place in the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Sweden. Since 2006, Amflora has been tested at different locations, also in Germany, in some on a large scale.

Approval: Conflict of basic principles concerning green gene technology

The first applications for approval for the newly developed potato were submitted already in 1996. In 2003, after the approval moratorium expired in the EU, a new application for the Amflora potato was filed for cutlivation, and two years later its utilisation as food and feed stuff. For the safety appraisal and approval process it was decisive that the new significantly tightened EU regulations for gene technology were then in force.

However, politically there was more than one single approval application at stake. The Amflora potato would be the first genetically modified plant that had received approval in the EU since 1998. It had become a symbolic, charged issue, in which a political conflict of basic principles about green gene technology was being carried out.

After the expert panel responsible for gene technology in European food safety had assessed the Amflora potato as being safe for the environment as well as for the health of both people and animals, the start for commercial cultivation was expected in 2007.

Since the Member States could not agree with the necessary relative majority on either acceptance or rejection of the Amflora potato, according to EU law it fell to the EU commission to make the decision. However, in contrast to similar cases, the Commission hesitated.

The concerns of the then Environment Commissar Stavros Dimas, as well as many gene technology-critical organisations focussed in particular on the “Amflora” genetic marker that mediates an antibiotic resistance against kanamycin.

The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) confirms that antibiotics in the kanamycin group play an important role in treating certain infectious diseases in human and animal medicine. However, in a further report in June 2009, EFSA’s GMO Panel declared Amflora to be harmless in this regard. The GMO Panel considers gene transfer from a GM plant to bacteria to be highly unlikely. The effectiveness of antibiotics would therefore not be compromised.

Coexistence: Problem secondary growth potatoes

Potatoes propagate almost exclusively vegatjvely through tubers. Although fertilisation of neighbouring plants through the pollen is possible, reproduction through seeds – the potato berries that are poisonous for people – is very ineffective and rarely occurs under natural conditions. In addition, in Europe, no wild-type plants related to the potato exist to which the modified gene could be transferred.

Therefore, the problem for the coexistence for cultivation of conventional and genetically modified potatoes is primarily secondary growth. In practice it is hardly possible to remove all potatoes during the harvest. Single potatoes often remain in the soil which can germinate in the following year.

Farmers who want to grow the Amflora potato have to undertake to adhere to certain regulations. These include not being able to plant conventional potatoes on a field in the year after it has been cultivated with Amflora. If Amflora potatoes are still present in the soil, they will germinate in the following year. They are then clearly recognisable and can be combated with suitable remedies. Furthermore, the whole chain of the Amflora production, from seed potato to the processing in the starch industry has to be spacially separated from conventional potato production. The BASF is responsible for ensuring that these conditions are met and must negotiate appropriate contracts with the farmers and processors.

The Amflora potato is intended exclusively for the starch industry. The Commission has approved the use of the waste material (pulp) from the starch production as animal feed. However, the Amflora potato is not allowed to be used as a food stuff. As with all GM-plants that have been assessed as safe and licensed in the EU, accidental, technically unavoidable admixtures up to 0.9% are allowed.