Wild breed shows potential for developing drought-resistant potato: researcher
Global News
Federal scientists in Atlantic Canada are trying to develop a new breed of potato that is better adapted to growing conditions brought on by climate change.
Federal scientists in Atlantic Canada are trying to develop a new breed of potato that is better adapted to growing conditions brought on by climate change.
Bourlaye Fofana, a research scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, leads a team in Charlottetown that has examined wild potato varieties native to the South American Andes and that show potential to help the development of a more drought-resistant potato for North American markets.
There are more than 5,000 potato varieties worldwide, says the Agriculture Department, and that high number has decreased the genetic differences between many of them, making some potatoes less resilient to disease and to climate change.
“We see a lot of problems because genetic diversity among these cultivated commercial varieties is quite narrow,” Fofana said in an interview. “With climate change and heat waves, this lack of genetic diversity could be a big problem in the future.”
Most commercial varieties of potatoes are of tetraploid origin — they have four copies of each chromosome in their DNA, with two copies inherited from each plant parent. Fofana has been working with wild potato varieties native to Peru that have two copies of each chromosome and are known as diploid. He said the chromosome difference makes the wild potato variety easier to work with in the lab.
“It’s easier to find (genetic) markers; so, if you find your marker in diploids, it can be used in a tetraploid,” he said.
Fofana said the wild potatoes are smaller than traditional commercial varieties but look the same.
“I have been working on diploids since 2014 and we are getting clones that are viable in terms of yield, tuber size and quality,” he said. “We know, for example, the starch content is quite good and the processing quality is quite good.”
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