Potatoes are a staple food with high antioxidant properties that can positively affect population health. The beneficial effects of potatoes have been attributed to tuber quality. However, the tuber quality related researches at genetic levels are very few. Sexual hybridization is a powerful strategy for producing new and valuable genotypes with high quality. In this study, 42 breeding potato genotypes in Iran were selected based on appearance characteristics such as shape, size, color, eyes of tubers, and tuber yield and marketability. The tubers were evaluated for their nutritional value and properties, viz. phenolic content, flavonoids, carotenoids, vitamins, sugars, proteins, and antioxidant activity. Potato tubers with white flesh and colored skin had significantly higher levels of ascorbic acid and total sugar. The result showed that higher phenolic, flavonoid, carotenoid, protein concentration, and antioxidant activity were noted in yellow-fleshed. Burren (yellow-fleshed) tubers had more antioxidant capacity in comparison to genotypes and cultivars, which did not differ significantly with genotypes 58, 68, 67 (light yellow), 26, 22, and 12 (white). The highest correlation coefficients in antioxidant compounds were related to total phenol content and FRAP, suggesting that phenolics might be crucial predictors of antioxidant activities. The concentration of antioxidant compounds in the breeding genotypes was higher than in some commercial cultivars, and higher antioxidant compounds content and activity were detected in yellow-fleshed cultivars. Based on current results, understanding the relationship between antioxidant compounds and the antioxidant activity of potatoes could be very helpful in potato breeding projects.

In potatoes (Solanum tuberosum L. 2n=4x=48) both the general combining ability (GCA) effects of parents and specific combining ability (SCA) of crosses are important in conditioning traits of economic importance. The objective of this study was to determine the combining abilities for tuber yield and its components on seven high-yielding commercial cultivars of potato and advanced potato clones. Significant differences were found between the parents in the all of traits that are associated with high genetic diversity between parents. GCA for tuber form, length of stolon and number of tuber per plant were high and for stem height, tuber skin appearance and eye dept were low. Heritability estimated from 49 percent in the number of stem to 84 percent in tuber skin appearance. Both heritability and genetic advance as percent of mean estimates were high for tuber yield, tuber form, length of stolon, tuber size, and number of tuber per plant and tuber size uniformity. AS10, AS12, AS14 and UT43 clones was best general combiner for the tuber yield, tuber size uniformity, eye depth, tuber dry matter and length of stolon. The SCA effects were the highest in the cross Savalan?UT43, Luca?AS20, Stbr2?Savalan and Picasso?HS in the traits were considered. Savalan and UT43 parents used in the crosses also have high GCA in studied traits. Finally results showed that Savalan, UT43, AS10, AS12 and AS14 in the studied traits was the high GCA and better than other parents.