Potatoes that contain as much vitamin C as a lemon might be grown and sold in England within five years. Researchers at the James Hutton Institute in Dundee claim they can double the amount of vitamin C in a new strain of potato by snipping out sections of its DNA. They would be using “game-changing” gene-editing technology. Gene editing, a separate process to gene modification, involves cutting out a small section of a plant’s DNA, allowing researchers to quickly develop new strains of crops which would have taken decades through natural cross-breeding.
Lemons and oranges contain approximately 53mg of vitamin C per 100g. But Prof Derek Stewart, director of The Advanced Plant Growth Centre at the institute, has stated that his team could increase levels in a potato to around 40mg. The team would then look to ‘overshoot’ this figure ‘significantly further’ to compensate for the loss in vitamin C that occurs during cooking.
They are also developing strains which cook in a third of the time, have greater resistance to disease, heat and pesticides with no loss in flavor.
Source: potatonewstoday.com
Photo source: Dreamstime.com
