A scientific breakthrough could soon lead to a multitude of good news for potato growers, retailers and consumers.

New Zealand experts are part of an international team of scientists that has cracked the genetic code of the potato, creating the potential to selectively breed new varieties much faster. This could result in potatoes with improved nutritional value and yields as well as increased resistance to drought, extreme temperature and diseases and pests such as psyllid.

Terry Olsen, chairman of Potatoes New Zealand, which supported the New Zealand team’s work funded by Plant & Food Research, hails the development as a fantastic breakthrough with far-reaching potential.

“It’s a great achievement and adds significantly to the range of tools we have available to us,” he says.

“Clearly the potential for breeding new potatoes is very exciting but there may also be many other benefits we have not even thought of yet.”

The potato genome sequence will reduce the 10 to 12 years traditionally needed to breed new varieties and by improving yield, help address the predicted global food shortage.

Olsen says it will enable Potatoes New Zealand to identify genome sequences which have the desired qualities at an early stage. This means scientists will be able to target the breeding programme and reduce the number of plants screened to around 5000, achieving the end goal a lot faster.

“The traditional process of selective cross breeding to create a cultivar with the desired size, skin consistency, disease resistance, flavour and so on would usually take many generations of crosses to get the desired result,” Olsen says.

“The potato genome sequence now gives us a library of information. We can identify genes of interest, select potatoes that have that characteristic and speed up the breeding of desired new cultivars.”

FMCG caught up with Dr Jeanne Jacobs, one of the Plant & Food Research scientists involved in the potato genome consortium.

Dr Jacobs explains how significant this finding is.

How long did it take the team to crack the genome for potatoes?

The Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium (PGSC) was an initiative of the Plant Breeding Department of Wageningen University & Research Centre in the Netherlands. The founding members of the PGSC (including then Crop & Food Research, now Plant & Food Research New Zealand) first met in 2005. The sequencing work started in January 2006. The consortium has developed into a global consortium of 29 research groups from 14 countries over recent years. In late 2009, the PGSC released a high quality first draft sequence of the potato genome online. Since that time the PGSC has been refining the genome assembly, as well as performing exhaustive analysis and interpretation of the data to find all the genes, culminating in the publication in Nature (14 July 2011).

What’s next?

Plant & Food Research will use the genome sequence to identify genes of key interest to the potato industry – such as those improving nutritional profile, high yield, and pest and disease resistance – and use these as markers in screening seedlings in the breeding programme, reducing the time taken to deliver new commercial cultivars to market. The genome resequencing of four elite PFR potato cultivars has already been achieved and is currently being expanded to other important lines. This will give us detailed information on our own cultivars so we can target our search for cultivars with improved traits.

How significant will potatoes be in 10 years from now?

Potato is currently the third biggest food crop after wheat and rice. It is an important staple crop and as such is rapidly increasing in importance, especially in countries like India and China. One of the reasons for this increase is that potato readily grows in a variety of environments (altitudes, latitudes, marginal lands) and uses a lot less water than wheat and rice. Also potato is very nutritious; containing protein, vitamins and minerals. Potatoes are higher in vitamin C than apples.