September 29, 2003 by Dennis T. Avery Biotechnology has just
produced another massive breakthrough for world food security—a
blight-proof potato. Researchers used biotechnology to insert a
gene from a wild Mexican potato to create the first high-yield
potato with complete resistance to late blight. Late blight is
the terrible epidemic disease that starved a million Irish
farmers to death in the 1840s and drove another million refugees
to America. The disease can turn a field of potatoes to wilted
black mush in a few days. Today, late blight represents an even
bigger threat to global food security as Asia is becoming
dependent on the potato’s ultra-high food production per acre
and has tripled production. In the first wave of publicity, the
British Broadcasting Corporation got the news wrong, again, due
to its European anti-biotech bias. The BBC said, “Scientists
have discovered a gene which protects potatoes from blight.”
Plant explorers actually discovered the blight-resistant wild
potato nearly fifty years