Researchers from SCRI will join forces with colleagues at the universities of Dundee and Warwick in a multi-million pound project to investigate late blight – responsible for the Irish potato famine and still wreaking havoc around the world.

Late blight is still the most destructive potato disease in the world and accounts for more than £3billion a year in crop failure and the cost of fungicides.

Researchers at the University of Dundee, the University of Warwick, and SCRI, will examine how molecules called effectors from the potato pathogen Phytophthora infestans are able to cause late blight and Hyaloperonospora arabidopsidis effectors cause downy mildew in the model plant Arabidopsis.

The £3.5million grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council comes under the Longer and Larger (LoLa) programme to fund collaborative research. The research project will be led by Professor Paul Birch, in the Division of Plant Sciences at the University of Dundee, in collaboration with Professor Jim Beynon at the University of Warwick, and involves researchers at the SCRI, Scotland’s leading crop research institute, near Dundee.

Professor Birch said: “Late blight, in the mid-19th century, was responsible for the Irish potato famine when a million people died of starvation and more than 1.5 million emigrated from Ireland. Today, it is still the worst potato disease and results in huge losses. Recently, two related species, Phytophthora ramorum and Phytophthora kernoviae have been introduced into the UK, where they are infecting native trees and shrubs, posing a considerable threat to gardens and the natural environment.

“As in animals, plants have evolved a complex immune system to prevent attack from micro-organisms but microbes continue to evolve ways to get round the defences and establish disease. They achieve this by secreting proteins called effectors into cells of the plant which block the plant’s immune responses.

“The discovery that the pathogens Phytophthora and Hyaloperonospora have hundreds of genes encoding these effectors, along with recent advances in technology to study protein-protein interactions, provides an unparalleled opportunity to investigate how plant defences are targeted and suppressed by invading microbes.”

More information from:

Phil Taylor, Head of Communications, SCRI, Invergowrie, Dundee, DD2 5DA. Tel: 01382 560044 (direct line), Mobile: 07810 860 701 or

Lorraine Wakefield, Information and Online Service Officer, SCRI, Invergowrie, Dundee, DD2 5DA. Tel: 01382 560047 (direct line) or 562731 (switchboard).