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Re: [SANET-MG] gene for late blight in potato



Hi John ,
BASF is reported to be going ahead with tests in UK, Sweden, Germany and Netherlands with potatoes carrying the genes Rpi-blb1 and Rpi-blb 2 these are the regulatory genes of the NBS-LRR of a family that includes plant, animals and fungi. The GM really needed more testing before they are released to the environment. I do not understand exactly why BASF needs to do preliminary resting in so many countries? They are certainly not planning to test the people exposed to pollen, seed or dust from plant debris. As I pointed out, moving genes between plant species has led to fatal or near fatal inflammatory disease while BASF argued that the potatoes are safe because they come from related species There is no reports that any surviving bulbocastanum somatic hybrids were fed either to mice or to people.They seem to use that belief to convince friendly EU bureaucrats that not much testing is needed and if people get sick it must be caused by something else? Hope you will join in the effort to get full testing on bystanders including people and wild animals or barring that no trials should be done
sincerely, joe

John D'hondt wrote:

I have said it before, I have been growing potatoes in one of the wettest
areas of Ireland for 18 years without any chemicals and no blight damage by
using a few simple organic techniques :
-using a mixture of home grown seed potatoes and a mixture of potatoes grown
from real seed.
-immunizing soil against blight by using enough home made compost and never
taking potentially diseased botanical material away.
It is that simple and all the rest is unnecessary tripe. Gmo potatoes may
kill more rats but that might be a dubious benefit.
john in West Cork

Solanum bulbocastanum,  was  stably resistant to blight but could not be
sexually crossed with  potatoes.  A process called somatic hybridization
was used  to create sexual hybrids. Somatic hybridization includes
fusing cells from cell cultures of  Solanum bulbocastanum and potato,
fused cells contain nuclei of both potato and  Solanum bulbocastanum.
When the fused cells undergo mitosis  the chromosomes of the two species
are mixed and a single hybrid nucleus is formed in the cell. The cells
can be cultured on solid media to form solid callous  (tumor) which when
treated with plant growth hormones  produces plantlets that  produce
flowering plants . The somatic hybrids have irregular meiosis and
irregular chromosome pairing but relatively stable blight resistant
lines can be obtained (5,6,7) Along with the  11 potato blight
resistance genes  that produce broad spectrum resistance are very
effective against blight, these  .include the gene RB (8) along with the
genes Rpi-blb1 (9) and Rpi-blb 2 (10) which are active in both potato
and tomato.  The somatic hybrids are useful in identifying resistance
genes and transmitted into potato breeding lines by crossing.
Nevertheless,  genetic modification of potato breeding lines is
presently preferred  because resistance can be introduced into
commercial lines with greater speed.

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