Are We Getting Better at Using Wild Potato Species in Light of New Tools?

Abstract

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.), mankind's third most consumed food crop, originated as an interspecific hybrid in the Andean highlands. More than 100 species closely related to potato exist throughout Central and South America. Potato was introduced to Europe, Asia, and North America in the 16th and 17th centuries, but most cultivars were destroyed by late blight epidemics in the mid‐19th century. Late blight resistance genes from the wild relative Solanum demissum Lindl. were subsequently introduced into cultivated potato. Thus, a precedent for the use of wild relatives in potato genetic improvement was established a century ago. Intensive efforts have been made to collect and maintain wild relatives of potato in public germplasm repositories. Genetic diversity in these species is high, and most are sexually compatible with cultivated potato. Perhaps more than any other vegetable crop, potato can benefit from the introgression of genes for valuable traits from wild relatives. However, a century of breeding has realized that potential on only a few notable occasions. Important examples include improved processing quality and resistance to viruses and nematodes. Substantial barriers prevent the facile incorporation of genetic material from wild relatives into potato cultivars. Overcoming these barriers may require an expansion of germplasm collections to include well‐characterized individuals as a complement to population‐based accessions. To be most useful for potato improvement, individual wild species plants will need to be cataloged by allelic composition, haplotype, biochemical properties, and physiological responses to stress. Effectively using the genetic diversity in wild relatives is likely to rely heavily on alternative methods of potato breeding, augmenting reassortment, and selection at the tetraploid level with diploid breeding and genetic modification using biotechnology.

Upland Italian Potato Quality—A Perspective

“…Currently, the modern varieties show a reduction in structure genetics caused by the domestication of selective breeding [5]. Thus, the interest of the scientific community towards future global germplasm enhancement, along with changing food lifestyles increasingly sensitive to the geographical area of origin, have stimulated a return to the great biological diversity of the potato, which has a precious source of unexplored quality traits such as biotic resistances and adaptability to a wide spectrum of environments [6].…”

“…New biofortified genotypes are hard to obtain through conventional selective breeding with wild potato species, often described as particularly rich in beneficial phytonutrients [49]. For example, group Phureja has contributed different traits to modern yellow-fleshed potato cultivars [6]. The presence of incompatibility barriers caused by the genetic complexity of the Solanum genera, characterized by a tetrasomic inheritance and high heterozygosis, could hamper the backcrosses necessary to obtain hybrids [6], unless new plant breeding techniques are adopted (NPBTs) [44].…”

Polyploid Gene Expression and Regulation in Polysomic Polyploids

“…54% of monocot crops are polyploids, while 40% of them are wild species [20] [21]. However, wild relatives have potentially advantageous gene pools, determining biotic stress resistance and abiotic stress tolerance (in corn, cotton, rice, and soybean) [22] or attractive traits (in potatoes [23] [24]). Current strategies for domestication and breeding of wild relatives may reduce the hereditary diversity of all crops [25].…”

Introgressive Hybridization in Potato Revealed by Novel Cytogenetic and Genomic Technologies

“…Bradeen and Haynes 2011;Ramsay and Bryan 2011;Birch et al 2012;Kloosterman et al 2013). This limited genetic diversity was further reduced due to genetic bottlenecks during photoperiod adaptation and losses resulting from viruses and the late blight epidemics of 1845-1846 (Bethke et al 2017). However, cultivated potato and its wild relatives signify a more diverse (Fig.…”