Talk:Genetically modified potato

suggestion

hi! nice article. saw you just added content on the desiree potato. it would probably be most useful for readers to broadly separate research projects (like desiree -- and of which you can probably find dozens of examples since researchers make all kinds of changes and publish them) from products that actually were brought to market. within the latter category you might want to separate: a) things that are on the market and b) things withdrawn from the market (like New Leaf). Within a) it would be useful to separate potatoes used for food from those that are not. not necessarily with sections but at least clearly, with text. what most people care about, is food. i'll go ahead and do that.. let me know what you think. Jytdog (talk) 21:07, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Ok! Sounds like a good idea to me. Funny, I had noticed you a while ago on Wikipedia, I think it was something in the recent changes... I don't exactly remember... Anyways, I was looking around at all sorts of things, talk pages, etc, and you seemed to be there a lot, on some of the same types of articles I like to help editing, specifically science-related articles, even more specifically, those about biotechnology. I noticed you have a reputation as the one who makes sure the science in the articles is consistent with the consensus of the scientific community, keep the information NPOV, etc, etc. Some people don't seem to like that. Go figure... Anyways, given that this draft I am working on fallls within your area of interest, the thought had acually crossed my mind, "I wonder when Jytdog will see this...". Glad to see ya here! I could use the help getting this draft to full article status SarrCat ∑;3 22:04, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

sorry to have caused an edit conflict for you. thank you for the welcome - welcome to you as well! Jytdog (talk) 22:55, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

S'ok. It happens. SarrCat ∑;3 23:25, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

It's tricky to know how to organise this. I agree that some separation between research and commercialised versions is a good start, but the current way is a bit messy. E.g. Desiree is used becuase it's a common a variety, but the changes made to it could be to any variety. The pusztai affair and the current blight work are also polar opposites and so don't belong together. A chronological version might be better, particularly as the major change in recent varieties is using potato genes, rather than bacterial ones. Alternatively, we could organise it by traits (blight resistance, bruising etc.) and also include a section on the history of research and of commercialisation.

More generally, I was at a talk given by Haven Baker last year and he said that Simplot's potato researchers came from Monsanto when they quit the market... I wonder if that can be sourced? They're also working on blight resistance in combination with Jonathan D. G. Jones [1]. SmartSE (talk) 23:29, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

that sounds reasonable too, smartse. the key thing for me is that readers know what they might find in the store. with regard to research, i have generally avoided specific GM plants in the research phase anywhere in the suite because of the number of papers that could be cited and things that have been done, and there is no good way to sort that or pick one over the other. (the pusztai affair stuff was a clear hook to discuss the GNA variety, however). There was a great suggestion on the Talk page of the GM Crops article (now archived - it is here) to have a section in that article - an encyclopedic section - laying out key research directions and challenges for developers of GM crops. i really like that idea but have not gotten to it yet. Something like that might be good for the individual GM crop articles like this one as well - that would be a way to handle research, without getting into WP:LAUNDRYLIST territory of listing specific ones. Jytdog (talk) 00:00, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

I figured it would need quite a bit of reorganizing before actually getting published as an article, I was just focused on getting some basic info down about different varieties I could find, and sourcing for them. It sounds like you have some good ideas about how this cold be organized though. I especially like the point that many readers who might find their way to this article would want to know what kinds of GM potatoes they would be actually eating, if any. That's why I liked having the "Currently marketed varieties" section first, though I was thinking about having a "history" section before that. Alternatively the history of development could be incorporated into the article in a chronological manner, as SmartSE suggested above above. Oh, and the reason I included the bit on the current work on blight resistant varieties was that I had found reporting on it done by BBC, a secondary source, right? Given that there was a secondary source, i figured that it qualified as notable. I also included the primary source as a citation, because it had more details. Thoughts? SarrCat ∑;3 01:09, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Hey, is that telegraph article reporting on the same variety as the BBC article?SarrCat ∑;3 01:11, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Public opinion of GM potatoes

I had included a paragraph about Mcdonalds rejecting Innate potatoes, which later got shortened down in the editing process (though the gist of what it said is still there). While this one example of reaction to GM potatoes is relevant to that particular variety, there are plenty of other reliable sources out there, reporting consumer response to many of the varieties. Should these be integrated in with the information on each variety covered on this page, or shall we have a "Controversy" or "Public opinion of GM potatoes" section? I'm kindof leaning towards a separate section. SarrCat ∑;3 01:24, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Nice source about Monsanto's attempts to introduce GM potatoes

• https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/172 SmartSE (talk) 13:33, 5 July 2017 (UTC)