These conference reports are written by the beneficiaries of our travel fund.
Click here to read more about the fund and apply yourself
Where is Oulu and why is a potato meeting being held there? This was always going to be the first question to ask when considering attending the triennial EAPR meeting. Oulu is on the Finnish coast, a mere 200 km south of the arctic circle, which in late July not only makes for nearly 24 daylight but also very warm temperatures. The connection with potatoes comes from the surrounding area being one of Europe’s high grade seed potato (HG) production areas. The meeting opened with welcoming addresses from two Finnish dignitaries, Leila Helaakoski and Martti Eirola representing the Centre for Economic Development, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, respectively. The current EAPR President, Jari Valkonen then formally opened the meeting, highlighting in his address the publication since the last triennial EAPR meeting of both the potato and Phytophthora infestans genome sequences.
It should be stated at this point that both of us are grateful for BSPP travel support to attend and speak at such a diverse and interesting meeting. The EAPR has a number of different ‘sections’, such as pathology, that hold their own focussed meetings. However, the triennial meeting brings together all of the sections into a single, very diverse conference that covers everything from health and nutrition, environmental impact, quality traits, disease resistance, pathogen studies, abiotic stress, and crop protection. The research strategies used in these studies range from field-based assessments of potato cyst nematode spread presented by Marc Goeminne, through to very intricate molecular biology involving next generation sequencing to identify disease resistance genes as presented by Walter Verweij and Florian Jupe. The strength of this meeting comes from the bringing together of molecular scientists, applied researchers and plant breeders. All three groups gain from each other through exchange of knowledge and establishment of new collaborations. For example, molecular scientists learn from breeders how changes in the market influence the needs of farmers for new resistances and other agronomic and quality traits.
The scientific sessions began with a presentation by Meredith Bonierbale (CIP, Peru) that encompassed utilising biodiversity in South American potatoes to improve their nutritional value. It was something of a surprise to learn that, for example, some varieties of potato contain useful levels of bioavailable iron. The following presentations covered potato production as well as potato research efforts in East and Central Africa (William Wagoire), and an agricultural tool to assess the carbon footprint of potato production (Anton Haverkort). Apparently, 20 g of carbon is released to produce just the potato contained in a 50 g packet of crisps!
Throughout the meeting, the plenary sessions were interspersed with concurrent sessions, with a strong component of plant pathology running through the meet ing. Perhaps predictably, the most ‘popular’ disease was late blight, with the focus mostly on identification of novel resistance specificities. The next two most popular pathogens were potato virus Y and potato cyst nematodes Globodera pallida and G. rostochiens is. Additionally, an emerging quarantine disease that is concerning plant pathologists and plant breeders is potato wart, caused by Synchytrium endobioticum. From a wide range of presentations throughout the meeting, it became apparent that tuber-bearing and non-tuber-bearing wild Solanum accessions are a major focus for identification of new disease resistance traits worldwide. Accessions from several genebanks are being exploited in this research, such as the Commonwealth Potato Collection in the UK, the International Potato Center in Peru, and the Vavilov collection in Russia.
Of specific interest throughout the meeting was marker assisted breeding, and how it is practiced in, for example, small breeding companies (Lopez, Spain) or in the Gebhardt laboratory at the MPI in Cologne. All of them are aiming to identify markers for more rapid selection of potato breeding lines. In resistance breeding, this knowledge can be linked with the recently published potato genome sequence, and the identified NB-LRR type resistance genes as shown by Florian Jupe.
The third day of the conference was given over to excursions. These two BSPP correspondents opted for the ‘New technologies and applications utilizing potatoes’ and ‘Research and seed potato production, with some cultural aspects related to the HG region’. Other than food, one industry using potatoes involves the use of potato starch in paper production as a binding and strengthening agent. At the paper mill, it was incredible to see the complexity and scale on which this seemingly everyday product is made, with a little help from the humble potato. This tour also visited a local potato farm and two seed potato companies. The other tour visited the University of Oulu with its Center for Internet Excellence, MTT AgriFood Research Centre, as well as the Finnish Food Safety Authority (Evira), giving an insight into the control and research systems that help this region to maintain the standards for high-grade seed potato production. Both excursions finished up with a visit to a potato vodka distillery, where several local specialities could be tested.
The use of GM technologies for improvement of potato was also well covered during several sessions. Ewen Mullins (Teagasc, Ireland) presented an alternative bacterium (Ensifer adhaerens) to Agrobacterium tumefaciens for DNA transfer to plants. The driver behind this research was the desire to avoid the patent restrictions concerning the use of Agrobacterium in commercial production of GM plants. Their bacterium appeared to compare favourably to the well-established Agrobacterium in its ability to transfer and integrate DNA into plant cells. Cisgenic technology was the focus of Suxian Zhu’s (WUR, The Netherlands) talk, using stacking of three cloned late blight resistance genes as an experimental system. She was able to demonstrate that a proportion of her produced plants were truly cisgenic, in that they contained no foreign DNA in the form of plasmid vector backbone sequences. Further down this path, Tony Conner (New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research) presented work on producing intragenic potato plants, using plasmids, gene regulatory elements, and selectable marker genes all derived from potato DNA. Using this system, no genuinely foreign DNA is transferred in genetic modification experiments. Also on the topic of GM, a lively, well attended workshop was held that benefitted from contributions from scientists and breeders from all over the world, and their various experiences and local differences in acceptance of GM crops. From this emerged a view that disease resistance (especially to late blight) was a good use of this technology, while for other applications more traditional strategies of plant breeding and use of germplasm may be more appropriate. Regarding public opinion, it was unanimously supported by those at the workshop that we as scientists could do more to explain and demystify the technology for the public.
After an excellent conference dinner on the Thursday evening, the final day of the conference, for those able to make the 0900 hr start, comprised concurrent sessions, one of which focussed on virus diseases of potato. The final plenary session focussed on genomics research in P. infestans and potato, and how these resources were being used. Steve Whisson explained how the P. infestans genome, already available since 2009, was being used to identify pathogen effectors essential for disease development. Richard Visser , representing the potato genome sequencing consortium, described the status of the published genome sequence and gave examples of how it was being exploited to identify genes underlying some quantitative quality traits, and identify additional SNP markers linked to other traits of interest.
It must also be added that the daily 20 hours of daylight during this period, and the fantastic public places around the Oulu marketplace and harbour, helped in making new friends amongst the world potato research community.
Florian Jupe and Steve Whisson
James Hutton Institute
