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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Madison, Wisconsin » Vegetable Crops Research » Research » Research Project #443949

Research Project: Introgression of Disease Resistance and Tuber Quality Traits from Wild Species Relatives into Diploid Cultivated Potato

Location: Vegetable Crops Research

Project Number: 5090-21220-006-000-D
Project Type: In-House Appropriated

Start Date: Mar 12, 2023
End Date: Mar 11, 2028

Objective:
Objective 1: Identify wild species relatives of cultivated potato with valuable disease resistance and tuber quality traits. Goal 1a: Determine the resistance phenotypes of 200 clones to major pests and diseases, including soft rot, late blight, early blight, verticillium, scab, and Colorado potato beetle. Goal 1b: Determine the phenotypes of 200 clones for vine maturity and tuber quality traits including, tuber shape, skin type, cold-induced sweetening resistance, and specific gravity. Goal 1c: Image analysis and maintenance of phenotypic data. Objective 2: Introgress discovered traits into cultivated potato by crossing with self-compatible diploid lines. Goal 2a: Cross wild species clones to self-compatible diploid cultivated potatoes. Goal 2b: Identify self-compatible individuals in progeny. Goal 2c: Identify self-compatible interspecific hybrids that contain traits of interest. Objective 3: Develop genetic resources and molecular markers associated with disease resistance traits that breeders can use when generating advanced breeding lines. Goal 3a: Genotype wild species clones in the diversity panel using GBS. Goal 3b: Use the dRenSeq hybrid capture approach to characterize the R genes present within the diversity panel. Goal 3c: Marker development for traits associated with disease resistance to late blight and verticillium wilt. Goal 3d: Data management of traits and markers information.

Approach:
A total of 200 clones from 12 wild potato species will be screened for resistance to soft rot, late blight, early blight, verticillium, scab, and Colorado potato beetle and tuber quality traits including, tuber shape, skin type, cold-induced sweetening resistance, and specific gravity as part of Objective 1. Clone characteristics will be documented with photographs. Phenotype and genotype data will be added to the GRIN accession record and to Breedbase. To make traits more readily available for use in diploid breeding, clones will be crossed to diploid self-compatibility donors derived from cultivated potato in Objective 2. Self fertile F1 progeny containing the Sli gene will be identified and screened for parental traits of interest. F1 seeds will be made available to the breeding community. In Objective 3, each of the clones will also be genotyped using genotype-by-sequencing (GBS) and R-genes will be identified using sequence capture and long-read next generation sequencing. To assist breeders with selection for disease resistance traits, R gene sequence data and GBS markers will be used as a starting point for developing markers that segregate with the trait as part of Objective 3. Marker data and segregating markers will be contributed to Breedbase.