Researchers working to 'get the upper hand' on potato wart, but warn solutions will take time

Stephen Brun · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 10, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: March 10

A tract conscionable extracurricular St. John's could 1 time clasp the cardinal to treating oregon eliminating a fungus that dealt a immense stroke to P.E.I.'s iconic murphy manufacture 4 years ago, and continues to person ripple effects today.

A conception of tract astatine Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Avondale Research Farm successful Newfoundland was intentionally infected with murphy wart astir 50 years ago. 

The lone known installation dedicated to murphy wart probe successful the world, Avondale allows scientists to survey the beingness cycle of the soil-borne fungus, Synchytrium endobioticum, and imaginable methods of controlling it.  

"Once this illness is contiguous successful the soil, the spores… of that fungus that origin the illness tin unrecorded successful the ungraded for 10, 20, 50 years," said Linda Jewell, a probe idiosyncratic who studies works diseases astatine the Avondale farm. 

"There's nary mode that we cognize of to get escaped of them, different than simply time."

The find of murphy wart successful samples from six Prince Edward Island fields backmost successful 2021 led the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to question a ministerial bid banning each murphy income from this state to the U.S. marketplace for 4 months. 

Over the people of the investigation, CFIA unit collected and analyzed astir 50,000 ungraded samples from fields associated with detections of the fungus, which disfigures potatoes and sharply reduces harvest output but is not harmful to humans.

Though galore truckloads went to nutrient banks, hundreds of millions of pounds of Island potatoes had to beryllium destroyed implicit the wintertime of 2022 due to the fact that nary buyers could beryllium found. 

The export of caller array potatoes yet resumed, but a national ministerial bid restricting shipments of effect potatoes from P.E.I. remains successful effect.

'Really hard disease'

There are nary known fungicides for murphy wart and it can't beryllium grown successful a lab, making it hard and time-consuming to study, said Jewell. 

But since the 2021 detections successful P.E.I., the Avondale Research Farm has ramped up its efforts to recognize however to power the dispersed of murphy wart and dainty fields that person it. 

"In general, we're looking for… assorted ways that we mightiness beryllium capable to get the precocious manus connected this truly hard disease," Jewell said. 

That enactment includes increasing a assortment of potatoes to find whether they're resistant to the fungus and studying its genetics for a "weak point" that would let researchers to people the disease. 

They're besides investigating caller and accepted fungicides successful hopes of striking it lucky. 

The eventual extremity is to find thing growers tin usage connected their fields to forestall oregon dainty murphy wart, but Jewell said the solution is inactive a agelong mode off. 

"We admit that… best-case [scenario] would beryllium respective years down the line," she said. "Potato wart is simply a precise antithetic illness and it's reasonably hard to enactment with. It doesn't behave similar galore different fungi, and that makes it precise hard for america to bash the types of studies successful the lab." 

The 2021 murphy harvest successful P.E.I. had been called the champion successful generations, pursuing 3 mediocre increasing years.

The detection of murphy wart was devastating to farmers, with the state going truthful acold arsenic to acceptable up a helpline for intelligence wellness support. 

Jewell hopes the enactment being done astatine Avondale volition yet easiness that benignant of load for good. 

"It's already precise hard to beryllium a farmer. Of people it's a batch of precise hard enactment and a batch of economical stress, and the past happening that growers request to interest astir is different precise hard disease," she said. 

"It would truly beryllium precise rewarding to assistance lend to thing that… takes 1 much interest disconnected of the list."