The potato is an important crop for Latin America and especially for South America, where it originated. Genetically improving potatoes can be a way to produce varieties that are resistant to pests and climate change, said Arnulfo Gutierrez, an expert on potatoes and a Panamanian official.
There are no modified potato varieties in the region yet, said the specialist who chaired the organising committee of the XXVII Congress of the Latin American Potato Association (ALAP), which was held this week in Panama City.
Gutierrez said genetically modified potatoes were a major advance from the scientific point of view, but stressed that societies would only be able to profit from these developments after having accepted these products and the technology which produces them.
"If the society does not accept this product we'll definitely have to find another way of improving them," he said.
The researcher from the Institute of Agricultural Research of Panama (IDIAP) recognised that transgenic potato cultivation was a very controversial issue because of the effects that this crop could have on the environment, human health, and biodiversity. He stated that he had been developing his studies for more than 10 years.
Research on this issue, which was analyzed at the XXVII Congress of the ALAP, has been performed in very controlled conditions at the International Potato Center, which has offices in Lima, Ecuador, Africa, and China, said Gutierrez.
In contrast to Latin America, there are countries that have GM potatoes which contain a property of the Bacillus thuringiensis (or Bt), an insecticidal bacterium, that supposedly makes them more resistant to agricultural pests.
He stressed that finding solutions to agricultural pests by means of conventional breeding was not easy, so they focused on introducing genes that were not typical of the species to achieve success in production.
The expert believes this is a way to control pests without applying agrochemicals, which are not good for the environment, and to do it at a much lower economic cost.
The introduction of genetically modified varieties can have a future, he said, because otherwise potato production might disappear in some areas if there are no effective controls against the various bacteria, such as the Ralstonia solanacearum or dormidera, which affect crops in Panama and cannot be controlled with chemicals or with other measures.
He added that the International Potato Center, headquartered in Lima, was also working on breeding new potato varieties that had a higher tolerance to higher temperatures and diseases that could be caused by climate change.
In turn, the researcher of the Idiap said Panama paid the highest potato production costs in Latin America, which may exceed $10,000 dollars per hectare.
Panama has 800 to 1,000 hectares devoted to potato production per year, which require between 1,280 and 1,800 tons of seed, according to a publication by Gutierrez in the Idiap.
Panama, which lacks a certification program to produce potato seed, annually imports about 140 tons of different category seeds from Europe and the USA to supply 10% of the actual demand. Producers invest more than $2,400 dollars in seeds per hectare, according to Gutierrez.
In Chile, production costs are at about $5,000 per hectare and they may be lower in Bolivia and Peru, the expert said. He also noted that production costs in the region ranged from 2,000 to 12,000 dollars, depending on the level of technology used to boost productivity and performance.
The higher the technological level used, the higher the production costs, he said, noting that, unfortunately most of the major potato producing countries in the region, including Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Colombia imported potatoes that had been industrialised and processed in the US, Canada, the Netherlands, or Germany.
