Moyo Mukani, Magembe Eric, Mwaura Lucy, Byarugaba Arinaitwe Abel, Barekye Alex, Nyongesa Moses, Taracha Catherine, Ghislain Marc
International Potato Center, Nairobi, Kenya.
National Agricultural Research Organisation, Entebbe, Uganda.
Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2024 Aug 1;12:1432079. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2024.1432079. eCollection 2024.
Late blight, caused by the pathogen , 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 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.
晚疫病由病原菌引起，是一种对全球马铃薯生产造成毁灭性打击的病害，在非洲影响尤为严重，因为那里获得杀真菌剂的机会有限，加剧了其危害。晚疫病的爆发导致产量下降，给马铃薯种植户和农业系统造成巨大经济损失。培育适合非洲农业生态条件的抗晚疫病马铃薯品种，为减轻晚疫病对马铃薯种植的毁灭性影响提供了一个可行的解决方案。在本研究之前，选定了两个深受消费者喜爱但对晚疫病高度敏感的品种维多利亚和尚吉，通过基因工程赋予它们晚疫病抗性。这是通过插入马铃薯野生近缘种中对该病具有抗性的基因来实现的。在乌干达和肯尼亚的三个地点进行了为期8年的20次试验田试验，一直观察到赋予晚疫病抗性的预期效果。在本研究中，我们评估了与在相同农业生态条件下种植的非转基因对照相比，基因转化是否对马铃薯块茎的营养成分和抗营养成分产生了任何重大的非预期影响。对从乌干达和肯尼亚三个地点的监管试验中收获的商业规模马铃薯块茎进行了成分评估。使用双向方差分析对转基因和非转基因样品进行统计分析。总体而言，结果表明转基因和非转基因样品的营养成分和抗营养成分水平相似。所分析成分水平的差异落在现有文献和马铃薯成分数据库中记录的预期范围内。因此，我们得出结论，为抗晚疫病而进行基因改造的转基因和非转基因马铃薯块茎在营养成分和抗营养成分方面没有生物学上的显著差异。
