Targeted Innovation in the UK Seed Potato Industry to Improve Productivity and Quality

"Potatoes are the UK's largest vegetable category, producing 5-6 million tonnes p.a. valued at approximately £1.1bn. Production is relatively stable but prices and supply are volatile, with underlying issues including weather effects and related to these, disease. Bacterial pathogens of potatoes in particular are responsible for substantial losses through disease, leading to damage and failure to meet market specifications. Of particular importance to the UK and wider European industry, especially for high-grade seed production is blackleg (caused mainly by _Pectobacterium_ bacteria); responsible for \>£50M UK total losses p.a. and £750M worldwide. Blackleg is transmitted through the seed-multiplication system and is a major cause of seed downgrading and rejections (at an estimated cost of £100/tonne), together with downstream losses from tuber soft rot across the wider industry sectors.

This project builds on previous Innovate UK research in which combinations of novel, highly-specific and safe bacteriophage (naturally-occurring antimicrobials) have been formulated to target blackleg pathogens. These studies have concluded that the main commercial value of the technology is working with the high-grade seed industry, attempting to minimise seed contamination, safeguarding seed potato health for the industry downstream and adding a competitive advantage to the seed producers to compete for larger and new export markets, both within and outside of the EU (particularly post Brexit). Previous work also concluded that the assessment of blackleg controls should be a two-fold approach, recording both diseased plants and also, bacterial contamination of harvested tubers as a measure of their likelihood of transmitting disease to subsequent generations.

Key objectives of the proposed project are to follow successive generations of high-grade seed (from clean, field-generation 1 stocks), applying bacteriophage treatments both at planting (targeting seed contamination) and foliar applications throughout the growing season (targeting environmental disease sources). Also, work will be carried out to modify and optimise the initial bacteriophage mix to take into account new, emerging blackleg pathogens. The existing business-led consortium from project 101907 will be further strengthened by two new research partners (James Hutton Institute and University of Leicester), bringing innovative approaches to inform questions of both bacteriophage specificity and mode-of-action.

The project addresses a very timely and innovative opportunity given the impact of the disease on the industry. The Lead Applicant has already made significant progress in exploiting the technology to date and the proposed project would further de-risk the technology, allowing the consortium to maximise commercialisation opportunities post project as effectively as possible."