Sir, – Picture two rows of potato plants in a long raised bed. One row is the picture of health, the other is blight-ridden and bedraggled. That was the sorry picture in my veg patch this week. So how (since I don’t spray for blight) can one row get blight (an airborne virus) while the other survives? I sowed two potato varieties this year – one regular variety and the other the blight-resistant Sarpo Mira. Up to this week both varieties seemed to be faring well – then, last week the tell-tale signs of blight (yellowing leaves etc) appeared in one row. But as if there were some invisible force field surrounding them, the Sarpo Mira row remains completely perfect. How come? The variety has been carefully bred to have a natural resistance to blight.
I mention this to put some context on the EPA’s decision to allow Teagasc to start conducting trials on GM potatoes in Ireland. It strikes me as peculiar that while one arm of a state (Bord Bia) is doing Trojan work promoting Ireland as a sustainable food leader with the Origin Green initiative, another arm is doing exactly the opposite. We know from research that 70 per cent of EU citizens are against GM – so this decision is truly aligning us with the minority. That sounds like bad economics.
As GIY-ers, we know that this is not a black and white argument. It’s not just either a) continue to spray commercial crops with chemicals to prevent blight or b) introduce genetically modified blight-resistant potatoes instead.
There is a third option and evidence for its success can be seen in the controlled experiment in my garden, and the gardens of thousands of GIY-ers: it’s the naturally blight resistant potato varieties of which Sarpo Mira is such a promising example. Surely it would be far more in keeping with our Origin Green proposition to be commissioning Teagasc to research that instead of genetic modification that consumers don’t want?
At GIY, we are partnering with SPUDS to help them do some collective research on naturally blight resistant potatoes (see www.giyireland.com). – Yours, etc,