Author:
Moyo Mukani,Magembe Eric,Mwaura Lucy,Byarugaba Arinaitwe Abel,Barekye Alex,Nyongesa Moses,Taracha Catherine,Ghislain Marc
Abstract
Late blight, caused by the pathogen Phytophthora infestans, is a devastating disease affecting potato production globally, with adverse effects in Africa where limited access to fungicides exacerbates its impact. Outbreaks of late blight lead to reduced yields and substantial economic losses to potato farmers and agricultural systems. The development of resistant potato varieties, tailored to African agroecological conditions, offers a viable solution in mitigating the devastating effects of late blight on potato cultivation. Leading to this study, two consumer-preferred varieties, Victoria and Shangi, with high susceptibility to late blight were targeted for conferring late blight resistance through genetic engineering. This was achieved by inserting R genes from wild relatives of potato displaying resistance to the disease. The intended effect of conferring resistance to the late blight disease has been consistently observed over twenty experimental field trials spanning 8 years at three locations in Uganda and Kenya. In this study, we assessed whether the genetic transformation has led to any significant unintended effects on the nutritional and anti-nutritional composition of potato tubers compared to the non-transgenic controls grown under the same agroecological conditions. The compositional assessments were conducted on commercial-size potato tubers harvested from regulatory trials at three locations in Uganda and Kenya. Statistical analysis was conducted using two-way analysis of variance comparing transgenic and non-transgenic samples. Overall, the results showed that the transgenic and non-transgenic samples exhibited similar levels of nutritional and antinutritional components. Variations detected in the levels of the analysed components fell within the expected ranges as documented in existing literature and potato composition databases. Thus, we conclude that there are no biologically significant differences in the nutritional and anti-nutritional composition of transgenic and non-transgenic potato tubers engineered for resistance to late blight.
Reference48 articles.
1. Crop composition database;Agric. Food Syst. Inst,2024
2. Potential of acrylamide formation, sugars, and free asparagine in potatoes: a comparison of cultivars and farming systems;Amrein;J. Agric. Food Chem.,2003
3. Association of Official Analytical Chemists. Official methods of analysis. Glycoalkaloids (α-solanine and α-chaconine) in potato tubers. Liquid chromatographic method;First action 1997. Nat. toxins chapter
4. Association of official analytical chemists
5. Ascorbic acid concentration of native Andean potato varieties as affected by environment, cooking and storage;Burgos;J. Food Compos. Anal.,2009