1. Laboratory of Plant Breeding, Wageningen University, PO Box 386, 6700 AJ, Wageningen, The Netherlands
2. SENASA, Pedro de Pasaje Fransisco de Zela No. 150 piso 10, Ministerio de Agricultura, Lima 11, Lima, Peru
3. Centre for Plant Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
4. Fundación PROINPA, Av. Blanco Galindo km 121/2, PO Box 4285, Cochabamba, Bolivia
5. These authors contributed equally to this work

Correspondence to: Howard J. Atkinson³ Email: h.j.atkinson@leeds.ac.uk

Abstract

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics^{1, 2} suggests that introgression of genetic material into related species in centres of crop biodiversity is an insufficient justification to bar the use of genetically modified crops in the developing world. They consider that a precautionary approach to forgo the possible benefits invokes the fallacy of thinking that doing nothing is itself without risk to the poor. Here we report findings relevant to this and other aspects of environmental biosafety for genetically modified potato in its main centre of biodiversity, the central Andes. We studied genetically modified potato clones that provide resistance to nematodes, principal pests of Andean potato crops³. We show that there is no harm to many non-target organisms, but gene flow occurs to wild relatives growing near potato crops. If stable introgression were to result, the fitness of these wild species could be altered. We therefore transformed the male sterile cultivar Revolucion to provide a genetically modified nematode-resistant potato to evaluate the benefits that this provides until the possibility of stable introgression to wild relatives is determined. Thus, scientific progress is possible without compromise to the precautionary principle.

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