For those behind the paywall:

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in November approved for commercial planting a potato genetically engineered to have reduced bruising and browning—unsightly blemishes that lower the value of potatoes. The potato, developed by the potato giant J.R. Simplot in Boise, Idaho, is dubbed Innate as it contains only elements from sexually compatible, wild potato relatives, and employs RNA interference (RNAi) to reduce the level of several enzymes, among them one that produces the potentially carcinogenic metabolite acrylamide. This puts a new spin on the definition of a genetically modified (GM) crop, because unlike most commercialized biotech crops, it contains no foreign DNA (Nat. Biotechnol. 30, 215–217, 2012). It's not the first approved crop to employ RNAi; the USDA in November approved a GM alfalfa variety that knocks out a key alfalfa gene, but it contains additional genetic elements from species other than alfalfa (Box 1).

The newly approved potato is a milestone in the agbiotech industry because it was developed by a company outside the small club of multinational traders that dominate the biotech crop market. “This gives a little hope to a guy like me at a university,” says Kevin Folta, chairman of the horticultural sciences department at the University of Florida in Gainesville. “We have solutions for citrus that we can't use because it's so difficult to get them through the approval process. So seeing a company that's not the traditional Monsanto, Dow, DuPont and Syngenta be able to navigate, this is a ray of sunshine for us.”

Simplot's potato addresses a problem experienced by both the potato industry and home cooks. Potatoes bruise easily during handling and storage, and can turn brown within minutes of being cut and exposed to the air. Bruising and browning do not change the flavor of potatoes, but they make them less visually pleasing, and the potatoes are often discarded by consumers.

Simplot is billing its potato as a more sustainable product throughout the supply chain. Growers will pay a premium for the potato seed, but their crop will have fewer blemishes, and a larger percentage of the harvest can be sold at the highest price, according to Simplot. During storage and handling, fewer potatoes will be bruised from impact and pressure, enabling companies that store and transport the potatoes to incur less waste. “We've done the math. Before potatoes ever reach the consumer, there is 400 million pounds of potato waste that we could save if Innate potatoes were adopted in the fresh market,” says Haven Baker, general manager and vice president of plant sciences at Simplot.

Simplot's potato will be marketed to US chips producers and fresh markets, including grocery stores, restaurants, hospitals and hotels, according to Baker. The company will also market the potato to the US fresh-cut market where potatoes are cut, washed and packaged without preservatives or additives. Simplot would not disclose how the company plans to label or package the potatoes, or whether it plans to inform customers that its product differs from conventional potatoes.

Simplot is a longstanding French fry potato producer and rumors have been flying about whether the company will market its potato to the fast food industry, and whether fast food chains will accept a GM product. But Baker says fast food is not the target for the immediate future. “Many people assume that this program was designed for making a better French fry potato. But that is not the case,” he says. “The focus has always been on fresh [potatoes], fresh cut, and chips, because that's where the greatest value is for this generation potato.” He adds, “We do believe that over time all sectors will see the advantages of these potatoes but it's going to take some time.”

The previous GM potato to reach the US market was rejected by the fast food industry. In the late 1990s, St. Louis–based Monsanto commercialized its NewLeaf line of potatoes with insect and virus resistance traits. Despite the traits' effectiveness, McDonald's, Frito-Lay and others shied away from the technology. A Simplot spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal in 2000 that “Virtually all the [fast food] chains have told us they prefer to take nongenetically modified potatoes.” Monsanto pulled NewLeaf from the market in 2001, citing poor sales.

Simplot began its own biotech program with a different approach to genetic modification in 2001. To control browning, Simplot scientists targeted the enzyme polyphenol oxidase (PPO), silencing one of the potato's PPO genes—PPO5—by isolating it from a cultivated potato variety and reintroducing the truncated gene into commercial cultivars. The truncated gene activates the RNAi pathway, thereby silencing the expression of the gene. Reduced PPO levels were limited to the tuber by using PPO5, found predominantly in the tuber, as well as tissue-specific promoters.

A similar PPO-silencing approach was taken by the Canadian biotech Okanagan Specialty Fruits to create nonbrowning apples, Arctic Apples, which are awaiting regulatory approval by the USDA. Neal Carter, co-founder of the Summerland, British Columbia–based company, says scientists' understanding of PPO is now at a high level, making it a potential target in other crops that suffer enzymatic browning such as lettuce, cherries, avocadoes and bananas.

A secondary trait in Simplot's potato—lower acrylamide—was achieved by silencing the asparagine synthetase-1 gene (Asn1) in the tuber. Acrylamide, which has been linked to cancer in rodents, forms when potatoes and other starchy foods are cooked at high temperatures, a by-product of a Maillard reaction between asparagine and sugars. Suppressing the asparagine enzyme results in production of 50–70% less acrylamide when the potatoes are cooked, according to Simplot.

Biotech proponents hope that the lack of foreign DNA in Simplot's potato will satisfy some arguments coming from the anti-GMO (GM organism) crowd. “It shifts the debate, it should be a dream of anti-GMO people because it has clear sustainability benefits,” says Jon Entine, founder and executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project. The potato is also less prone to create environmental issues such as gene flow. “From a regulatory standpoint, the potato is about as safe as you're going to get,” says Alan McHughen, a biotechnologist at the University of California, Riverside. “They are incapable of escaping and becoming wild weeds, or cross-pollinating with other potatoes.”

Still, concerns were raised during USDA's public comment period. Doug Gurian-Sherman, senior scientist at the Washington, DC–based Center for Food Safety says more research is needed to understand the effect of silencing the asparagine enzyme, as asparagine has been shown to play a role in plant defenses against pathogens. He says the data in Simplot's petition for deregulation didn't offer convincing detail on how the company went about testing. Simplot's Baker says the company's disease studies were sufficient. “It would not be in Simplot's best interest to sell a product that had not been exhaustively examined for altered response to biotic and abiotic stressors,” he says. Simplot's petition and the Center for Food Safety's comments are both publicly available on the USDA's website.

Simplot has submitted its potato for safety review by the FDA and is planning to launch the potato in limited test markets in the spring of 2015. In addition, the USDA has before it a second Simplot biotech potato, this one with cold storage and late blight resistance traits. The agency will consider public comments on the technology until January 9.

Not really what I expected from "next-generation" potatoes, but hey, it's:

- Not transgenic

- Not developed by Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, or DuPont

So I'm rather curious what people will make of it.