With celebrity endorsements from Kate Moss and Sir Mick Jagger, goji berries have been at the forefront of the UK’s craze for “superfoods”, but the innocuous berries could devastate Britain’s multi-million pound tomato and potato crops.
The government alerted farmers to the threat after it revealed that nearly 90,000 goji berry plants, which carry diseases lethal to other crops, have been illegally imported from East Asia in the past year. Some of the plants have been destroyed but it is feared that most are already in the gardens of goji berry fans.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has issued a warning to commercial growers, garden centres and home gardeners, while the National Farmers’ Union has warned that disease carried by the bright red berries could be “devastating”.
“There are particular concerns over this,” said Chris Hartfield, horticulture adviser to the NFU. “Put simply, because goji plants are part of the Solanaceae family – the same as potatoes and tomatoes – the bugs can travel on the goji plants, then easily move to, say, potatoes, where they debilitate the crop.”
He added: “The retail value of British tomato production is £150m, and potatoes are worth more than that, so the size of the industry that is under threat is pretty massive. If some bugs were to arrive here, they would be devastating.”
The goji berry, is also know as Lycium barbarum, contains up to 500 times more vitamin C than an orange. The berry is native to the Tibetan Himalayas, and has been used for medicinal purposes in China for centuries.
Although the seeds and berries can be imported from anywhere in the world, only plants grown within the European Union are permitted to be imported to the UK, because they are certified to be free of disease.
“All the time new diseases are emerging and evolving,” Mr Hartfield said, “and the reason that we have strict quarantine regulations is to protect British growers.”
DEFRA, last night, was trying to calm down farmers’ fears about the risks of any major outbreak, saying the chances of widespread disease were relatively low, because of weak connections between amateur gardeners and commercial vegetable growers.
