{"id":37016,"date":"2013-07-18T18:42:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-18T22:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetsave.com\/?p=37016"},"modified":"2013-07-18T18:42:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T22:42:00","slug":"irish-potato-famine-causing-pathogen-is-more-virulent-now-than-ever-6-2-billion-spent-annually-on-arms-race-with-phytophthora-infestans-pathogen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/articles\/irish-potato-famine-causing-pathogen-is-more-virulent-now-than-ever-6-2-billion-spent-annually-on-arms-race-with-phytophthora-infestans-pathogen\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish Potato Famine-Causing Pathogen Is More Virulent Now Than Ever — $6.2 Billion Spent Annually On Arms Race With Phytophthora Infestans Pathogen"},"content":{"rendered":"

The deadly plant pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine of the 1840s — Phytophthora infestans<\/em> — is actually more virulent now than ever before, as the result of the arms race between the pathogen and modern agriculture, new research has found. Over $6.2 billion dollars are spent every year in an attempt to stay one step ahead of the pathogen, and to limit the damage that it causes.<\/p>\n

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“The plant pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s lives on today with a different genetic blueprint and an even larger arsenal of weaponry to harm and kill plants.”
Image Credit: North Carolina State University<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As the new research reports — the deadly Irish potato blight pathogen of the 1840s lives on today, with a somewhat different genetic blueprint and an even larger array of weapons. The new work — done by North Carolina State University<\/a> plant pathologist Jean Ristaino and colleagues Mike Martin and Tom Gilbert from the University of Copenhagen — was done by comparing the genomes of five different 19th century strains of the Phytophthora infestans<\/em> pathogen with the strains of the pathogen that are present today in the world, which still cause extensive damage every year to potatoes and tomatoes in spite of modern control methods.<\/p>\n

What the researchers found was that “the genes in historical plant samples collected in Belgium in 1845 as well as other samples collected from varied European locales in the late 1870s and 1880s were quite different from modern-day P. infestans<\/em> genes, including some genes in modern plants that make the pathogen more virulent than the historical strains. In one example, a certain gene variant, or allele, called AVR3a that was not virulent in the historical samples was shown to be virulent in the modern-day samples.”<\/p>\n