An AFLP marker core subset for the cultivated potato species Solanum phureja (Solanum tuberosum Group Phureja)

Authors: DEL RIO, ALFONSO - University Of Wisconsin; Bamberg, John

Submitted to: American Journal of Potato Research
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 9/10/2021
Publication Date: 10/18/2021
Citation: Del Rio, A.H., Bamberg, J.B. 2021. An AFLP marker core subset for the cultivated potato species Solanum phureja (Solanum tuberosum Group Phureja). American Journal of Potato Research. 98, pages374–383 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12230-021-09849-w.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12230-021-09849-w

Interpretive Summary: Potato is the nation's top vegetable, so improving it has value to US agriculture and consumers. An important way to improve the crop is through breeding using exotic relatives of the cultivated potato. For this purpose, the nation maintains gene-banks of many samples. It is difficult and expensive in time and money to screen all these stocks for useful traits. It helps to identify a smaller subset "core" group of samples that represent most of the traits within the whole species. We did this for a primitive cultivated potato group "phureja", identifying 10 samples that capture 86% of the genetic markers in the entire set of the 144 samples available at the gene-bank. Now we are able to offer breeders and researchers the obvious efficiency of a pond that is much smaller than the whole lake, but has almost as many fish.

Technical Abstract: This study used AFLP markers to characterize genetic diversity in 144 accessions of the ex situ collection of the potato species S. phureja at the United States Potato Genebank (USPG), and use that information to generate a core subset to facilitate trait screening and potato germplasm use. A total of 1534 polymorphic AFLP markers were generated and showed to be effective to resolve genetic relationships. All the accessions were clearly discriminated from each other with similarity levels ranged from 62 % to 89%, and no duplicate germplasm samples were detected. For building the core, the presence of the AFLP marker was considered as the trait to keep. This analysis found that when the 10 of the accessions of phureja with the highest marker contribution were combined they captured ~ 86% of all the AFLP markers detected in the whole collection. An addition of 16 accessions with smaller but unique marker contributions resulted in a final core set of 26 accessions that captured 96% of all the marker diversity. A review of the public database of valuable traits identified in germplasm for this phureja collection showed that 25 out of 30 of these traits were also incorporated in the core subset. As with previous work at the USPG, we expect this can create opportunities for facilitating the evaluation and research of a reduced set of materials with nearly all of the diversity of the entire set.