Genetically modified potato

Goals of modification include introducing pest resistance, tweaking the amounts of certain chemicals produced by the plant, and to prevent browning or bruising of the tubers.

It is designed to resist blackspot bruising, browning and to contain less of the amino acid asparagine that turns into acrylamide during the frying of potatoes.

[5][6] Though, browning does not affect the quality of the potato, it is simply that consumers tend to not want to purchase "damaged" or possibly spoiled[7] goods.

It was designed to resist attack from the Colorado potato beetle due to the insertion of Bt toxin producing genes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis.

[19] In 2014, a team of British scientists published a paper about three-year field trial showing that another genetically modified version of the Désirée cultivar can resist infection after exposure to late blight, one of the most serious diseases of potatoes.

This gene, which conferred the resistance to blight, was isolated from a wild relative of potatoes, Solanum venturii, which is a native of South America.