RE SEARCH Agricultural Seed and Seed Potatoes (NAK) for five years now. I can now share my international experience and knowledge of the cultivation of seed potatoes with the students of the University of Pretoria. This is the largest university in Africa with a total of 50,000 students. For comparison: Wageningen University has 10,000 students. I have been appointed Professor of Crop and Soil Science here. My work entails giving one or two series of lectures throughout the year and I coach a number of students for their doctoral research.’ In addition to your research work you also engage in business activities. Can you combine these tasks? ‘Researchers and professors have three main tasks today. The first one is research, the second is teaching and the third important task is consultancy. With regard to this last task, I indeed often act as an independent consultant. This mainly concerns projects for which companies or governments wish to provide deeper systematic knowledge. I therefore provide advice within the agreed framework of my expertise, on request or otherwise. This sharing is also very much encouraged. The aim is to provide value for the fields of practice by drawing on your own research. In addition, I also learn a great deal from the business sector. To give an example, two major processing companies, PepsicoFritolay and McCain, have asked me to adapt a calculation method used to calculate how much CO2 it costs to grow a vegetable - the Cool Farm Tool - for the potato. The method now includes irrigation, harvesting, storage and sprout inhibition. The results of the potato suppliers are destined for the processing industry, but I’ll publish how it works with examples from Dutch cultivation systems of seed, starch, table and organic potatoes so that other companies can also calculate their environmental impact. I think it extremely important to increase measuring around sustainability; in addition to CO2 or energy, amount of land, water and phosphate, for example, how much does it cost to grow a ton of potatoes? What is the CO2 load at this moment and what standard should one really aim for? These are questions that still remain to be answered before a company or chain can start intervening and billing on hard figures. In short, responsible management. That’s very important.’ Why is this so important? ‘Today, food safety is a matter-of-course. That was also a new development thirty years ago which has now become commonplace. Soon, sustainably-grown food will also be a strict customer demand. In the same way as food safety now, sustainability will also be pre-competitive, meaning that it applies to everyone and is no longer a competition component. In my view it means that the industry must jointly carry the load to get ready for the future. Locally-produced food has a sustainability advantage; it already applies to the potato which, compared to cereals, is mainly produced locally and is becoming increasingly popular in developing countries. I see this in the assignments I carry out for Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation in various countries. The Agriculture Council then wants to know what the possibilities are for growing potatoes in general or a subgroup such as seed or crisp potatoes. You are also project leader of DuRPh, for tackling Phytophthora with the help of cisgenesis genetic modification. How does that fit in with your research into sustainable cultivation methods? ‘I am convinced that my research into sustainability will soon be better known than DuRPh. With DuRPh, we build resistance genes in potato varieties. This is, in fact, the same as what breeders do in their quest for new varieties. Cisgenesis, the strategy we apply in DuRPh, is much faster, however, and more directly targeted and we don’t change the morphological characteristics of the varieties. In this modern breeding method, we have first mapped out all the Phytophthora resistance genes. This allows us to see exactly how resistance is built up in the existing varieties. We know, for example, that in the highly-resistant Sarpo Mira variety, a number of R genes are actively stacked. Thanks to this gene stacking, a plant has more resistance to the worldwide dreaded Phytophthora. I would therefore argue strongly for the use of research results for regulation around cisgenesis potatoes, also because you may not be able to see later whether cisgenesis or traditional breeding work has been used. By using it, it is at least shown that gene stacking works. Look at the Sarpo Mira, but our own research results also make this clear. It is very important to have proper international policies in place here.’ Will European society ever accept this argument? ‘That I can not predict. What I am more concerned about, however, is that the Netherlands will lose its lead in potatoes if it doesn’t evolve further into more and higher-yielding varieties. Farmers grow potatoes in a tight crop rotation, allowing phytosanitary problems to occur. Especially in view of the fact that saturation in the market in respect of the processing of the potatoes is occurring. But problems are also increasingly occurring in the cultivation of seed potatoes. I would like to mention Erwinia and the constant threat of ring and brown rot. I also plead for a DuRPh-like approach for these bacterial diseases, while carrying out a study on where resistance is found in wild varieties. This is likely to be very successful, especially when you see that the Erwinia Delta plan doesn’t produce far-reaching solutions. Furthermore, we must have system jumps in cultivation and breeding work to achieve the same stormy developments in the next forty years that characterised the past forty years, as a result of which the Netherlands moved into the lead. DuRPh is one example, resistance to Erwinia should also become one. It is also necessary to put in place efficient mass production of planting stock to drastically reduce the number of second crops, perhaps by using genetically complete homogeneous seed from the berry, the True Potato Seed (TPS), what the International Potato Centre wants. A system jump - also in genetic and processing techniques - is necessary to obtain a product that meets the consumers’ wishes in 2050 in respect of taste and health.’ ● Jaap Delleman Potato World 2011 • number 3 5 Pagina 4
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