Scientists at the Scottish Crop Research Institute at Invergowrie have won funding to help beat a potato disease that costs farmers around the world a staggering £3 billion a year.

They'll get more than £400,000 to support work on late blight. DNA technology will help researchers at the Invergowrie institute gather knowledge about how the disease establishes itself in host cells. They may also be able to find ways to combat the condition in its early stages.

The main aims for the project, at SCRI and the University of Aberdeen, are to identify P. infestans proteins that trigger disease resistance that may be utilised in breeding programmes; they'll also seek inhibitors that will interfere with the transfer process of these proteins.

The grant is part of a £13 million drive by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). The Council is hoping to tackle the challenges to agriculture posed by climate change and an increasing need to grow and farm in sustainable ways.

Lesley Torrance, Head of Plant Pathology at SCRI said: "This is fantastic news for our researchers. Late blight is a serious hazard for farmers and one of the most dangerous of diseases for the potato. At the moment, controlling it requires substantial use of agricultural chemicals. We will work to find ways of making crops better able to resist the blight."

Professor Julia Goodfellow, BBSRC Chief Executive, said: "The UK is home to some of the best plant science in the world. We want to harness this and exploit it to address some of the pressing issues that we face. BBSRC's aim is to support basic crop research that will produce outcomes to make farming more sustainable and able to meet the challenges of a changing environment."

SCRI - the Scottish Crop Research Institute - is based at Invergowrie, Dundee.