Potatoes

It is believed that the resulting blueprint of how the potato works could revolutionise breeding programmes and reduce the 10–12 years currently needed to breed new varieties.

As a key member of the Solanaceae family, the potato is closely related to tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. It is the world’s third most important crop and the most important vegetable crop.

Access to the potato genome sequence is expected to assist potato scientists to improve yield, quality, nutritional value and disease resistance of potato varieties.

Dr Jeanne Jacobs of Plant & Food Research says New Zealand will benefit from the genome sequencing as scientists gain insights into the genetic control of important attributes including disease resistance, nutritional value, colour and flavour.

“If you know exactly which part of the chromosome holds the genes for a particular trait, then you can precisely target crop improvements using molecular markers and so speed up breeding,” Dr Jacobs explains.

“The research is also yielding genetic information important to the improvement of other crops that share some of their DNA sequences with potatoes.”

The potato genome has 12 chromosomes and is estimated to be 840 million base pairs.