Ben Raskin of the Soil Association clearly exposes the problems of a failure to link agricultural production to the best nutritional outcomes (30 August, p 18). The Sárpo potato cultivar that he lauds has been trialled by the UK Potato Council, but such blight-resistant varieties are not necessarily the potato of choice for processors or consumers. In other words, if you grow them, they may not be wanted.
In the UK we breed crop varieties for high outputs and customer requirements. There are also requirements for potato cultivars to be disease-resistant and suited to processing, preservation and consumption. Linking these processes together is critical to global food security, and current plant-breeding methods may require more precise biotechnological approaches to obtain a fit-for-purpose, nutritious cultivar. These pressures may realistically result in a genetically modified potato crop.
We must also ensure that poor biosecurity and phytosanitary practices do not continue to ...
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.