Skip to main content
ARS Home » Midwest Area » Madison, Wisconsin » Vegetable Crops Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #299842

Title: Identification and selection for tuber calcium, internal quality and pitted scab in segregating ‘Atlantic’ x ‘Superior’ reciprocal tetraploid populations

Author
item ZORRILLA, CINTHYA - University Of Wisconsin
item NAVARRO, FELIX - University Of Wisconsin
item VEGA, SANDRA - University Of Wisconsin
item Bamberg, John
item PALTA, JIWAN - University Of Wisconsin

Submitted to: American Journal of Potato Research
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/12/2014
Publication Date: 6/18/2014
Publication URL: http://handle.nal.usda.gov/10113/60034
Citation: Zorrilla, C., Navarro, F., Vega, S., Bamberg, J.B., Palta, J. 2014. Identification and selection for tuber calcium, internal quality and pitted scab in segregating ‘Atlantic’ x ‘Superior’ reciprocal tetraploid populations. American Journal of Potato Research. 91(6):673-687.

Interpretive Summary: Potato is the world's most important vegetable, but needs continued breeding to improve resistance to disease and stress, and increase tuber quality and yield. Traditional potato breeding is a very slow process. Two common cultivars were chosen that represented opposite extremes for many sought-after traits. They were crossed, and many individual hybrids were separately grown and evaluated over three years. This allowed us to quantify the genetic effect of the desirable parent on each trait expressed in the offspring, as well as the interaction of genetics and environment. All traits showed significant differences among individuals, regardless of environment. This demonstrates that breeding progress can be made for all of these traits, and that it should be possible to identify genetic markers that will allow more efficient selection of those rare individuals that possess most or all of the desirable traits of both parents. Such individuals would be good candidates for new varieties that are easier for farmers to grow, and deliver a better potato food to the consumer.

Technical Abstract: Tuber quality traits are a major interest for breeders and the potato chip industry. This research intended to generate populations that can be suitable for the genetic study of tuber calcium, internal quality, common scab, and other commercially important traits such as yield, specific gravity and chip quality at the tetraploid level. Two populations were generated by reciprocally crossing the chipping cultivars: Atlantic and Superior. Phenotypic evaluations were performed during 2009 to 2012 at Hancock, Wisconsin. All traits evaluated had significant genotype effects and their broad-sense heritabilities were between moderately low to high indicating that the phenotypic variation observed between genotypes has an important genetic component. In addition, the reciprocal populations differed significantly usually in one of two years of evaluation for traits such as tuber calcium, tuber yield, specific gravity, enzymatic browning, chip lightness as well as chip color measured in agtron units and as a visual rating suggesting that some quality traits may exhibit cytoplasmic inheritance. Furthermore, the parents performed significantly different for all traits across trials, most genotypes had performances in between the parents and some were more extreme than the parents. These results indicate that these reciprocal populations could be used to study the genetics of tuber quality traits in tetraploid potato and breed varieties that combine the commercially desired traits of the parents.