Researchers try producing potato resistant to climate change

Good news for everyone.

Making food resistant is not difficult. Making it resistant, affordable, safe to consume, healthy for the human body (nutritional value) and reduce the impact on the environment is the challenging part.

Yes, @Truthandreason 9:33am Potatoes are versatile and a key ingredient in Spicy Gum, socks, toys, puppets, eh? See you around!

There have been real advances recently in blight-resistant tomato and potato varieties, which are jumping off points for a new generation of hybridisation.

Most of our staple crops are single varieties - often clones, some very old, that are grown in large batches together. Although economically optimal, the risk here is that, like battery farming animals, the method of production creates a petri-dish and catalyst for mutating pathogens.

For climate change we may need to rely more on the natural diversity of economically sub-optimal species. Research and seed banks need to source seed not just from clusters of plants but from outliers - seed deposited by birds at the edge of a growing range, that is naturally better at surviving (from the diverse characteristics of seed dispersal), and is naturally adapting with each generation.

We also need to start working with crops that may be viable in our local climate in a decade or two, crowd source advice from gardeners who are used to pushing the limits, and accept that our native flora may not be our native flora in the future. It may need to be replaced by something tougher that bees and other creatures can use or adapt too. Our typical crops may need to change too.

For example, olives, grapes and palms may not be sustainable for oil production in the future. One option is Argan oil. Mostly produced in Morocco for skincare, it is a tough tree that could be globalised. Whilst we would look for the most productive trees to breed from or reproduce via micropropagation, to retain the toughness of the species, greater diversity in growing the plants from natural seed may be wiser, despite a sub-optimal crop.

We may need to focus on smaller, thicker-skinned and hardier citrus, switch to the local production of varieties of fruit that do not store or transport so well, reduce reliance on vulnerable crops (like rice) and explore some of the hardier versions of common crops - there are hardier papaya growing at high altitude, although they require a little more work to make them edible.

Understanding the genetic make-up of plants helps shortcut choices on natural crosses, but it would be unwise for scientists to simply run with commercially-owned GM clones. Aside from the inevitable, unintended consequences of commercial GM, which could be catastrophic, we need a more biologically diverse solution for cropping, and more adaptation to local and changing environments.

Growing baked potatoes?

Super potato.

This may create a dilemma in some countries - eat the potato, or ferment it to drink later.