Journal of Taiwan Agricultural Research

Author:Lit-Fu Chen, Min-TzeWu, and Hsiu-Ying Lu*

Abstract:

    Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is the most important non-cereal food crop in the world. The transgenic potato plants, strain 2-1, were obtained by transforming phytase-gene into their original plants, cv. ‘Kennebec’ (wild type).  To study effects of flooding on survival and persistence of transgenic potato tubers in the harvested field, an experiment was conducted in a field at the Agricultural Research Institute in the fall crop season of 2006. A factorial split design with three blocks was used with flooding (with and without) as main factor and cultivars (strain 2-1 and wild type) as subfactors. For the flooding treatment, water level was maintained at 3 cm above soil, starting at harvest time and throughout the entire period of the experiment. For each of sampling date at 7, 17, 28, 51, and 70 days after flooding, four potato plants were randomly sampled from each plot and examined for number of tubers. Results showed that number of tubers was significantly reduced after flooding treatment of filed plots for 17 days, compared to non-flooding controls. After flooding for 28 days or longer, no tubers were found on both transgenic and non-transgenic plants of potatoes. This results suggest that flooding of potato fields is an effective method for post harvest field management of transgenic potatoes. Besides, production of potato tubers in the transgenic plants ‘Kennebec’ strain 2-1 was significantly lower than the non-transgenic plants cv. ‘Kennebec’ sampled from plots without flooding treatments. The lower number of potato tubers in the transgenic plants ‘Kennebec’ strain 2-1 might be another reference point for consideration in biosafety assessment of growing transgenic potatoes in the field.

Key words:Potato, Solanum tuberosum, Genetically modified crops, Phytase gene, Residue management, Flooding

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