Project Oppotunity completes first CRISPR-Cas field trials of late blight-resistant starch potatoes in Sweden and Denmark
Potato News Today, Nov. 14 2025
Project opportunity: a collaboration of 12 European organisations in the starch potato value chain – has reported successful completion of its first field trials with starch potatoes edited using CRISPR-Cas technology to improve resistance to late blight. The 2025 trials were conducted in Sweden and Denmark, alongside a seed multiplication programme designed to scale up material for larger tests in 2026.
From greenhouse seedlings to field plots in a single year
According to the project, the late blight-resistant lines were developed using new genetic technologies (NGTs), specifically CRISPR-Cas gene editing, applied to Kuras – a widely grown European starch potato variety supplied to the project by Agrico.
“Only last year we created the first seedlings and cultivated them in greenhouse to produce seed-tubers, and have now grown these so-called mini-tubers in the field during the 2025 growing season,” said Hans Berggren, secretary of Project Oppotunity.
“I’m very optimistic that by 2026 and onwards, we can show stakeholders the power of NGTs in the field via enhanced potato genotypes tolerant to a plant disease as severe as late blight. We have proven the speed this technology brings to adapt potatoes to urgent and changing environmental requirements.”
In parallel with the initial field plots, seed multiplication was carried out to produce more and larger seed potatoes. This will allow dedicated multi-location trials in 2026 focused on measuring how strongly the edited lines resist late blight and how they perform agronomically under commercial-style conditions.
Late blight pressure
Late blight, caused by Phytophthora infestans, remains one of the most economically important diseases of potato worldwide. Growers in many regions apply frequent fungicide sprays each season to keep the disease in check, and new pathogen strains continue to emerge, challenging existing chemistry and resistance genes.
Against that backdrop, industry-driven projects such as Oppotunity are positioning gene-edited resistance as a way to reduce fungicide use and strengthen the resilience of starch potato production in Europe – provided that EU rules for new breeding methods are clarified and implemented in a practical way.
Eight to ten years faster than traditional breeding
While the early signals from the 2025 field season are encouraging, Oppotunity stresses that several more years of testing and selection will be needed before a commercial product could be released.
“It will still take some years to verify the effects and select the single event that will deliver an appropriate increased late blight tolerance so that it contributes to a more sustainable starch potato cultivation,” said Sjefke Allefs, potato breeder at Agrico and a partner in the project.
“It needs to be stressed that the overall process is probably 8–10 years faster than what can be achieved with traditional breeding.”
By editing a specific resistance trait directly into an already established starch variety such as Kuras – rather than relying solely on repeated crossing and selection – the Oppotunity partners argue that they can keep familiar agronomic and processing characteristics largely intact while adding a targeted improvement in late blight tolerance.
Next steps: larger field trials in 2026
With seed stocks now increased, the consortium plans more extensive field trials in 2026 to quantify late blight pressure and resistance levels, assess yield and starch quality, and compare fungicide requirements against standard Kuras and other commercial checks. Results from those trials will help determine which single edited event, if any, moves forward toward potential commercialisation.
If the performance data stay on track and the evolving EU regulatory framework for NGTs provides a clear path to approval and market access, Oppotunity believes that gene-edited late blight-resistant starch potatoes could reach growers significantly faster than through conventional breeding alone – and provide a template for similar traits in other varieties.
More information about Project Oppotunity and its activities is available on the initiative’s website, oppotunity.eu.
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