Millions in Support to Accelerate the Development of Super Potatoes · 22. December 2011
With 12 million kroner in funding from the Danish Council for Strategic Research, researchers at Aalborg University are now developing DNA-based technology for more efficient processing of potato varieties. The new super crops can ward off famine and contribute to a more sustainable energy supply, but the project manager anticipates a race against time.
Kåre Lehmann Nielsen, Associate Professor, Section for Biotechnology, heads the new research project where he and his colleagues will work with LKF-Vandel and the bioinformatics company CLC Bio headquartered in Aarhus. Kåre Lehmann Nielsen has already gained international recognition for his contribution to mapping the complex genome of the potato. Knowledge from that work will be a key element in efforts to produce a tool that can accelerate the otherwise slow process of developing new potato varieties with higher energy content and greater resistance to disease and drought.
The grant in the millions from the Strategic Research Council is motivated by the fact that, beyond their dietary role, agricultural crops are also going to play a greater role in energy production in the form of bioethanol and serve as an important raw material in the chemical industry. The project titled MAShed Potato (Moving potato breeding into the post genome era) can therefore create the foundation for modern gene-based processing of potatoes in Denmark for the benefit of consumers, research, agriculture and industry.
Challenges and Ethics
Regardless of what purpose potatoes will be used for, this is about getting as much as possible out of the land that is available, according to Kåre Lehmann Nielsen:
- We already use all the agricultural land in the world and there’s no more rain forest to fell. So if we are to be twice as many people on earth and also get part of our bioethanol and our raw materials for the chemical industry from agriculture, then we simply have to develop some crops that provide much more per square meter than those we have now.
What is it about the potato that’s interesting?
- The feature of the potato that interests me is that it produces twice as many calories per acre as the cereals, maize and rice grown now – with the same or less input of nitrogen and water. But there are also some challenges with potatoes. There’s a big environmental impact from pesticides because we spray potatoes much more than other crops. We need to resolve this because the agriculture of the future has to deal with all these issues in a sustainable manner. This is the basis for us getting the money to develop and implement a new tool to accelerate the production of new and improved crops.
When can we expect these new crops?
- It takes time and there are several parts to this. What we are doing now, and what we've gotten money to do, is to establish a technology base so that we change the way we cultivate potatoes now to something significantly faster. At the end of this project, we will have some prototypes of varieties that will be really good, and in the course of two to five years, can be developed into actual new varieties that can be put on the market. But agriculture is a large-scale business, and that means that you have to have a lot of seed. If I had a new potato variety today and we put it on the market, it would take eight years for potato growers to get enough seed for it to start to mean something. So if we have to double global food production by 2050, we have to get going now. We’ve developed our own methodology, but elsewhere in the world there are similar initiatives with other methods aimed at crops like rice, sugarcane, corn, wheat and barley, which are some of the major food sources. Sugar beets would be obvious to look at, because they have a bit of the same properties as potatoes, although they have fallen completely out of the picture in Denmark.
Are you more optimistic for humankind since you're working with something that can help to meet the challenge of large population growth?
- I am actually. I think we’re going to solve the problem of food supply threatening our future. Agriculture has faced similar challenges at least three times in history and they have all been handled with technological breakthroughs. I'm pretty sure that they will be this time too. On the other hand, I can certainly worry that the countries that have the economic power to produce the technological advances do it before we lose too many lives to famine. There’s considerable political foot-dragging and a lack of investment because the Western world has enough food. It is not our consumption and our market that we have trouble satisfying.
What about the ethics of using foodstuffs for energy purposes – are you involved in the debate?
- Yes, I think it is a very important consideration. That's why I also ask that those of us in the richest parts of the world have a global perspective. If we stuff all our food into our cars and burn foodstuffs in a situation where there is not enough food in the world, it's unethical. But if we use our farmland to produce willow or other things that are not food related, then we’ll have to buy foodstuffs in the countries where it’s cheap to produce, and thus we would potentially buy it out of the mouths of the poor. So the picture is complicated, and you can’t just view it in terms of us being content with having to make bioethanol from crops that aren’t food because we’ll still be using land for it.
Further information:
• Kåre Lehmann Nielsen, Associate Professor, Section of Biotechnology, AAU, tel. +45 9940 8527, mobile +45 2787 9830.
• Forskningsleder Per Kudsk, Program Commission on Health, Food and Welfare under the Danish Council for Strategic Research, tel.+45 8715 8096, mobile +45 2228 3382.
• Carsten Nielsen, Science Journalist, Aalborg University, mobile +45 2340 6554.
