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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Wapato, Washington » Temperate Tree Fruit and Vegetable Research » Research » Research Project #440223

Research Project: Phenotyping or Optimizing Management of New Potato Lines with Improved Disease Resistance, Yield, or Quality

Location: Temperate Tree Fruit and Vegetable Research

Project Number: 2092-21220-003-013-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Jul 1, 2021
End Date: Jun 30, 2024

Objective:
The objective of this project is to develop profitable, high-yielding potato varieties for traditional fresh market, processing, chipping, and specialty enterprises that meet market demand, identify and incorporate genetic resistance to various production problems (Potato virus Y (PVY), Columbia Root-Knot Nematode (CRKN), Verticillium Wilt, and Late Blight), and develop new molecular and genomic tools for use in the breeding programs.

Approach:
Develop improved potato varieties: A multi trait recurrent selection approach will be carried out to develop new potato varieties with improved agronomic and abiotic and biotic stress resistance traits. A complementary hybridization will be carried and the True potato seeds will be planted and a single tuber from each seedling will be planted and selected as part of single hill selection. The retained clonal selection will be evaluated over number of years for their agronomic and other traits and any clonal selection with improved agronomic traits over standard varieties will be released as a new variety. Disease screening (field and greenhouse) –PVY, CRKN and Early die: All the Tri-State advanced selections will be screened for their response to late blight, CRKN, PVY and early die diseases. Late blight screening will be carried out at Lewis Brown farm in Corvallis and PVY, CRKN and early die field screening will be carried out at HAREC. Identified resistant germplasm will be used as parents in the breeding program as part of germplasm enhancement. Develop breeder efficient molecular tools using various molecular and genomic tools: In collaboration with other potato geneticists, next generation sequencing technologies will be used to develop new molecular markers linked to tuber resistance to CRKN, mapping of late blight resistance, corky ringspot (CRS) resistance, and identification of genomic regions responsible for spefic gravity.