Growing safer spuds: Removing toxins from potatoes

Scientists have discovered a way to remove toxic compounds from potatoes, making them safer to eat and easier to store. The breakthrough could cut food waste and enhance crop farming in space and other extreme environments.

Potato plants naturally produce chemicals that protect them from insects. The chemicals, called steroidal glycoalkaloids, or SGAs, are found in high quantities in the green parts of potato peels, and in the sprouting areas. They render the potatoes unsafe for insects as well as humans.

"These compounds are critical for plants to ward off insects, but they make certain parts of these crops inedible," said Adam Jozwiak, a UC Riverside molecular biochemist who led the study. "Now that we've uncovered the biosynthetic pathway, we can potentially create plants that produce these compounds only in the leaves while keeping the edible parts safe."

The research, published in Science, focuses on a protein dubbed "GAME15," which plays a key role in directing the plant's production of SGAs. This protein acts both as an enzyme and a scaffold, organizing other enzymes into a "conversion factory" that efficiently produces SGAs while preventing toxic compounds from leaking into other parts of plant cells, where they would wreak havoc.

By engineering plants to control when and where SGAs are produced, for example, in the leaves but not the potatoes themselves, the researchers envision crops that can be stored without the risk of toxicity from sunlight exposure.

Image source: Jozwiak et al. (2024), Science.