Exploring the use of wild relatives in potato breeding through integrated cytogenetic and genomic approaches

Summary

Potato is the third most important food crop and is a rich source of carbohydrates and other nutrients. Its stable production is threatened by pests, diseases and extreme environmental conditions. Fortunately, it has the most diverse and accessible pool of cultivated and wild relatives that can be used to introgress resistance to these adverse factors into potato through hybridisation breeding. The main objective of this work is to reduce major bottlenecks in the use of South American potato relatives in introgressive hybridisation breeding through advanced genomic approaches. Comparative cytogenetic, genetic and genomic studies were performed and the species analyzed showed to be suitable and promising to be crossed efficiently with potato as donors of traits of interest and to broaden the genetic basis of the crop.