Accelerating disease resistance breeding for diploid potato germplasm improvement

Pests and diseases reduce crop yields, requiring agrichemical sprays. We aim to replace agrichemicals with genetic resistance for pest and disease control. This project involves novel approaches (https://tinyurl.com/ycn4od6f) to understand and use potato diversity for disease resistance using newly available self-compatible diploid potato lines. Tetraploid potato lines carry useful variation for pest and disease resistance, but genetic analysis in tetraploids is difficult. Using appropriate crosses, diploid genetics will be used to define, introgress to diploids, and clone potato leaf roll virus (PLRV) and nematode resistance genes, and will use genome editing to accelerate breeding such genes into useful diploids and improve potato traits. CRISPR/Cas9 editing will be used for diploid potato improvement.