SustainPotato
Project Leader:
Muath Alsheikh, Head of Research and Development/Breeder, Graminor AS.
Project Partners:
Plant breeding entities: Graminor AS, Norway; Danespo, Denmark.
Academic institutions: Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO), Norway; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Sweden.
Associate partner: Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen), the Nordic countries.
Project Grants:
2021-2023: TSEK 11.828 (shared equally between the PPP and partners).
Main Goals:
- To develop and implement genetic resources and new molecular tools for effective disease resistance breeding in potato focusing on late blight and skin blemish diseases; e.g., common scab.
- The expected outcome of this project should provide Nordic breeders, researchers, retailers and growers with more competitive potato cultivars and technologies and thus increase their economic potentials.
This project brings three Nordic potato breeding programs and key public scientists to use available germplasm along with new tools for breeding potatoes with resistance to late blight and skin blemish diseases.
Project partners have agreed to contribute a total of 261 different cultivars/breeding clones that represent each breeder, with each partner providing 87 unique varieties. Additionally, 15 common cultivars have been selected to serve as checks in field trials conducted by SLU, Danespo, and Graminor. This approach will facilitate robust statistical analysis and enable data linkage across different field trial sites. All partners have finalized their 87 genotypes and agreed on the 15 common check cultivars. Historical data for these breeding clones will be collected, complementing the field trial and greenhouse test data obtained during the project. Furthermore, NordGen has contributed 46 accessions, along with their DNA and historical information.
Partners have agreed to conduct two separate field trials for the 87 breeding clones and 15 common check cultivars: one focusing on optimal yield and the other on late blight disease resistance. A unified field trial design has been developed for all trials at Danespo, SLU, and Graminor, and distributed to the partners. To ensure consistency in data collection, common protocols for assessing and scoring various traits are being established and uploaded to the Teams project page. Leaf samples from all breeding clones and check cultivars have been collected for DNA extraction and subsequent genotyping using single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).
In connection with the Norwegian National project BetterPotatoBreeding, led by NIBIO (with Jahn Davik as a partner in this PPP project), a common scab-controlled experiment was initiated in 2021. This experiment involved 1710 plants (19 populations × 45 genotypes per population × 2 tubers per genotype), which were inoculated with common scab at planting time in early June 2021, with data collection in August 2021. Images were also taken for WP2 analysis. Additionally, a detached leaf assay (DLA) for assessing late blight disease on leaf discs was carried out in the greenhouse in autumn 2021. This DLA test will be repeated in 2022 and 2023.
Leaf material from all 87 cultivars and 15 check cultivars from each breeding company in the project has been sent to Graminor for preparation and subsequent SNP Chip genotyping using the SolCapV3 array Illumina 22K Chip at SGS TraitGenetics. Protocols for drone imaging in the field trials have been distributed to Danespo, SLU, and Graminor. The project will utilize drone imaging for both the yield trials and the late blight disease trials. Drone imaging and analysis were performed for the 2021 field trial organized by Danespo, which included the genotypes involved in this project, as well as for the 2021 field trials at Helgegården and Mosslunda (Skåne, Sweden), which included SLU breeding clones and a few of the check cultivars.
/Muath Alsheikh, Head of Research and Development/Breeder, Graminor AS
In vitro plant from the Nordic potato collection, conserved at NordGen.
