Chinese scientists achieve new breakthrough in hybrid potato breeding
Fresh Common Potato
Vegetables
China
Published May 6, 2023
Tridge summary
Chinese scientists have made a new breakthrough in hybrid potato breeding by using evolutionary genomics to identify deleterious mutations, which may help shorten the breeding process and generate more and better potato varieties.
Original content
The breakthrough, made by a research team from the Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, was published online in the latest issue of the scientific journal Cell. Potato is the most important tuber food crop and one of the staple crops in most countries around the world, including China. Compared with other staple crops, potato needs less water and can be planted in a wide range of areas, said Wu Yaoyao, a key member of the research team. “But breeding a new potato variety takes too long. The potato variety used for McDonald’s fries was bred over 120 years ago,” Wu said. The main reason is that potato is tetraploid, which means it has four sets of genomes, and depends on asexual propagation through tubers, which has a long breeding cycle and low reproduction efficiency, while the tubers are also easily infected with diseases and prone to pests, Wu said. The research team launched a “Ubiquitous Potato Project,” aiming to ...
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