Gregory Parham
BI-245X
07/16/19
Dr. Hinks
Irish Potato Famine
Between the years 1700 and 1840, the Irish population grew from 3.5 million people to 8 million. The relationship between Ireland and England included exploitation by land owners, exports of food crops, poor housing conditions, and dependence on potato for food. The potato is important because it is a high yield crop producing a very healthy food with labor investment. Irish people used the potato for appetizers, dinner and desserts. Irish people used to survive just off milk and potatoes by their selves because they provided all the essential nutrients. During the early 1840s alone, one-half of the Irish population became dependent on the potato.
During 1845 to 1852, Irish potato production was devastated by blight. Blight is defined as a disease or injury of plants marked by the formation of lesions, withering, and death of leaves or tubers. Blight accounted for crop loss of all acreages planted in 1845 and three quarters of the crop was lost in 1846. Once blight occurred, seed potatoes were scarce for years and limited recovery. The severity of the potato blight in Ireland led to disease, emigration and mass starvation between 1842 and 1852. One million people died, million other people emigrated from Ireland to North American and 2/5 of the population was solely reliant to the cheap potato crop. With many people traveling to North American, the population fell between 20% and 25%. A political factor of the Irish potato blight included it being aggravated by the government policies of the British and Ireland’s colonial rulers. The biological factors for the potato blight are temperature and moisture. When the temperature is high and brought are present, the fungus is killed in the soil. The pathogen associated with potato blight is phytophthora infestans and is considered a water mold. The origin of phytophthora infestans came from Mexico to North America and then to Europe. The potato became vulnerable to the pathogen once they started shipping the potatoes as passengers and once, they got across the world, the ancestor of the HERB-1 strain died out and was replaced with the US-1 strain. The strains HERB-1 and US-1 must’ve split apart after their common ancestor left Mexico. The pathogen is favored by cool, moist environments. The consequences of blight on the Ireland population consisted of migration during and immediately after the “Great Famine”, population drop by 20%-25%, and there were many crop failures.
With technology rising each year and becoming more advanced, there has been a lot of speculation about using technology to modify genes of plants, animals, insect vectors, and human embryos for specific purposes. The potential benefits of using technology to modify things are producing better crops due to selective breeding, producing enough food by the means of developing more crops that yield more with fewer inputs which allow the crops to become more resistant to the disease, spoil less during storage and transport, and contain more nutrients. A few potential risk of this contemporary issue is even considering if the food will be safe, should it be labelled, whether the pest-resistant characteristic of the crops can escape to their weedy relatives causing resistant and increased weeks and the last risk is food are concerned with the different toxins, allergens, and genetic hazards. Me, personally, I don’t like the idea of technology modifying things I eat because it’s not grown nor real. I wouldn’t even know if the food is safe to consume due to selective breeding and crossing of different genetics. I just wish technology never became this big because we are trying to input technology every little piece we can and it hope it doesn’t destroy our future!
A GMO I’m interested in is CRISPR. CRISPR is a word processor that allows people to change just a letter or two and it changed genetic editing. It improves plants by removing a gene that makes them vulnerable to infection and that alone makes the potatoes more resilient. Another use of CRISPR can improve the quality and nutritional value of wheat, rice, potatoes, and vegetables by removing genes that cause allergic reactions in people. I think CRISPR in my opinion will be beneficial to the world because it will fight off pathogens that cause diseases and attack the plant’s immune system.
References
Module, Powerpoint
https://phys.org/news/2017-05-crispr-world.html