Potato mission: Saving the humble tattie in climate battle

Potatoes are the third most produced food crop in the world and are essential for food security globally. Luckily in the UK, we have been, in recent times, fairly self-sufficient in terms of potatoes, 70% self-sufficient compared with 50% for overall food security.

“That’s significant,” said Professor Ian Toth, director of the new centre and a microbiologist who has spent most of his career researching a bacteria that lives on potatoes. “It also needs to stay that way, or even increase. We’ve seen the issues we’ve had with fresh veg coming into the UK recently. A lot of supermarket shelves have been empty but at least with potato we have some security that won’t happen and we need to make sure we retain that.”

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In Scotland, we are big tattie lovers. Professor Toth said: “We’re brilliant eaters of potato in the UK. I think we eat at least 80 kilograms a year. 1.5 kg a week of potato – which is a lot, though it’s less than the European average which is 90 kg. Compare with somewhere like Australia for example, where they only eat about 17kg."

“I think particularly in the UK we are in the very fortunate position of having enough food to eat – and we take potato for granted. People don’t realise quite how important it is to us. I think part of the new centre will be making sure that we can better exploit this Commonwealth potato collection, but also to make sure people realise how important potato is."

Professor Ian Toth, director of the National Potato Innovation Centre.

But, in a warming climate, growing potatoes is an increasing challenge. They are a cool-climate crop, and with summers getting hotter and drier, production is likely to be threatened. Only last summer it was reported that drought and hot temperatures had led to a British potato yield that was smaller and poorer in quality.

“Climate is important for all crops and it’s no different for potatoes,” Professor Toth said. “We’re finding that climate change is affecting the crop, particularly in warmer countries and we need to find ways to combat that. For example, we know in the UK, particularly the south of England, that there have been huge issues, particularly with hot weather, and that’s not helped potato production at all. Though, because we can irrigate, that’s helping us a lot.”

But heat itself is not the only issue. “There is also,” he said, “always the fear of new pests and diseases. A lot of pests and diseases act at certain temperatures and certain precipitation, so, with climate change, there’s a real chance that we’re going to get new things coming in, and that could be very dangerous.”

Already, he observed, potato growers are feeling challenged on multiple fronts. “There are so many issues that are affecting them at the moment: the cost of fertilisers, withdrawal of pesticides and herbicides and fuel prices.”

With increasing numbers of herbicides and pesticides now banned, a key challenge is to create varieties that are resistant to pests and diseases. 

“Globally," Professor Toth said, "We need to find ways to produce potato more sustainably, at more affordable prices, and it’s not a straightforward thing to do and we know that it’s getting harder and harder for businesses and some of them will decide to stop and do other things – if they haven’t already.”

In its bid to create answers that work both for the industry and the environment, the centre plans to produce new varieties of potato, chiefly by finding genes in other rarer potato plants that are associated with greater heat or drought tolerance, or resistance to disease.

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At the heart of this plan is a treasure trove of potato seeds called the Commonwealth Potato Collection. This globally significant store of 1500 varieties of potatoes - seeds collected from plants in South America in the 1920s and 1930s - provides a vast genetic bank of plants from which to draw.

Already, said Professor Toth, the James Hutton Institute, has managed to create a new variety of potato called Quikgro, which is thriving well in the warm climate of Kenya.

“In Kenya, it has generally been too warm to grow potatoes, except in the Highlands where it’s cooler, and as the climate gets warmer, the potato production is going to keep rising up the hills and it’s going to start to concertina at the top of the hills.”

“But the Quikgro potato is now allowing Kenyan farmers not only to maintain the land that they’ve got but also to grow their potatoes lower down the hills. So they’re reducing disease pressures and increasing yield. They're expanding the amount of potato production. That’s only one variety. It’s only a start. But a simple solution like that can make such a difference.”

The new innovation centre is unique and set to be of global importance – the only similar institution being the International Potato Centre, whose chief focus is helping developing nations with food security and poverty.  What's different is that this Dundee-based centre plans to develop potato research that can help all countries, from developed through to developing nations.

For the potato, of course, is not just important to Scotland. It’s a key food almost everywhere – the biggest producers globally being China and India, followed by Ukraine, whose production will undoubtedly have been impacted by the current war.

26th March 1935: Girl farm workers picking potatoes at Straiton near Edinburgh. Image: Fox Photos/Getty Images

Yet, extraordinarily, across the world, all the potatoes we grow to eat, belong to one single species, solanum tuberosum.

By contrast, the 1500 varieties within the Commonwealth collection range over 80 species – and it’s mostly within these other species that the genetic answers to how to help our potato crops thrive are being sought.

Professor Toth said: "If we start to look at different potato species almost certainly there are going to be new properties within those different species that we can exploit, that in the last several hundred years as we’ve been improving potato, we haven’t really looked at in as much depth as we could. So the potential using this commonwealth potato collection offers huge potential for bringing new properties into existing and new varieties.”

But, he said, for the most part, the plants and tubers grown from this collection do not look a lot like the potato we are all familiar with. "Sometimes you will get plants that grow very spindly and produce tiny little tubers. Sometimes you get dumpy tuber. I do something with school kids where I show them these potatoes and they’re nothing like normal potatoes. There are 101 different shapes and colours and they’re beautiful.”

Plants grown from the Commonwealth Potato

They are also an incredible gene resource. Professor Toth said: “The idea is that if we can find a gene within them that is useful to the normal tuberosum style tuber. Then we can move those genes into what we know best – into a tuberosum variety. and use the trait but in a potato that we know well.”

Nevertheless, it's likely consumers have to move on from some old favourite varieties and embrace new ones. For instance, the familiar Maris Piper, beloved by chippies and the most common potato grown in the UK, is increasingly being viewed with concern.

“In terms of sustainability, it's not the best one to use," Professor Toth said, "It's not very resistant to certain pests and diseases. It would be good in the long term if it was replaced by something that was more sustainable.”

“I think that the main thing is to show consumers that there are varieties that are just as good but are more sustainable. They’re coming through all the time and our job is to convince people that these are just as good as Maris Piper in the kitchen and in terms of flavour.”

So, will the potato of tomorrow look and taste very different from the one we consume now?

He thinks not. "There is no reason that you can’t have a potato that looks exactly the same in the future as it is now, but it will have been bred to have certain properties like resistance or drought tolerance or heat tolerance. You won't notice these as a consumer, but will make a huge difference in terms of chemicals used, or the ability to grow it in a minimum of water, or whilst protecting the soil and the carbon in the soil.”