USDA Develops Plants With Built-In Insect Repellent
WASHINGTON —'The u’s.
Department of Agricutiure has
developed the first hybrid potato
plants with their own insect repel
lent built into their leaves.
As a result of two years of
biotechnology research, a team of
scientists with USDA’s Agricul
tural Research Service fused
together single cells from wild and
commercial potato plants, then
regrew the hybrid plants from the
fused cells.
These hybrid potatoes contain a
rare gene for leptine, a chemical
that repels insects, team leader Ste
phen L. Sinden said today.
“The most devastating pest of
U.S. potato fields, the Colorado
potato beetle, is repelled by lep
tine,” Sinden said. “The beetles
land on the hybrid plants as usual.
They peel back a little skin on
leaves and nibble, but then fly
away. The plants are barely
touched.”
In recent years, the beetles have
developed tolerance to insecticides
that farmers continue to spray at an
annual cost of over $l2O million.
In further tests this summer, it is
likely that the hybrid plants will
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resist some other pests, such as
troublesome potato leafhoppers,
he said.
Cell fusion is a method of gene
tic engineering that is different
from gene splicing or recombinant
DNA. In cell fusion, genes that
make up DNA, the hereditary
molecules, remain intact, he said.
“The advantage of cell fusion is
that we know the fusion hybrids
not only have the desired genes but
also that the genes are likely to be
expressed in the plants.”
With the potato hybrids, Sinden
said, “this advantage could help
breeders develop insect resistant
varieties within several years.”
The hybrid plants produce much
larger potatoes than do the wild
potato plants at least half the
size of commercial potatoes, Sin
den said. “We’re also pleased that
the fusion hybrids are fertile, that
they can be cross bred to improve
tuber (potato) yield and quality.”
Leptine may be toxic to humans
in large doses. However, Sinden
said, the hybrid plants make lep
tine only in the leaves, not in the
potatoes. The gene for leptine is
found in only one of a thousand
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types of wild potato plants. To find
the gene, his team screened 800
wild plants from one of the world’s
premier collections of research
potatoes, the agency’s Inter-
Regional Potato Introduction Sta
tion in Sturgeon Bay, Wis.
Sinden’s team found that leaves
of a few plants of a wild species
called Solanum chacoens have
high levels of leptine. Researchers*
used enzymes to dissolve bits of
the leaves into millions of single
cells in a laboratory dish. Another
treatment removed the cell walls,
natural barriers to plant cell fusion.
The scientists repeated the process
to produce a second dish of wall
ness cells from a variety called
Saco. They poured both dishes of
naked cells into a beaker of chemi
cals that forced close contact and
fusion of cells.
Only about one percent of the
cells fused, mixing their genes,
said Sinden, but in all the hybrid
plants the leptine gene from S. cha
coense became part of the DNA
from Saco.
The agency team includes plant
pathologist Kenneth L. Deahl,
geneticist Lind L. Sanford, ento-
i# <'(l' (l ,
mologist William W. Cantelo, and
Sinden, a plant physiologist, all at
the Beltsville Agricutlural
Research Center near Washington,
D.C., and chemist Stanley Osman
at the Eastern Research Center in
Philadelphia, Pa.
Agency plant breeder Raymon
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