More than 20 years after the first publication of the human genome, scientists from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, first deciphered the complex potato genome. This technically demanding study lays the biotechnological foundations for accelerating the improvement of more robust varieties, a goal in plant breeding for many years and an important step towards global food security. 

By buying potatoes at a market today, buyers may be coming home with a variety that had been available for over 100 years. Traditional potato varieties are popular. And yet, this example also highlights the lack of diversity among the predominant potato varieties. However, this may soon change: researchers from geneticist Korbinian Schneeberger's group were able to generate the first complete assembly of a potato genome. This paves the way for new and robust varieties.

"Potatoes are becoming increasingly wholesome in diets around the world, including in Asian countries like China, where rice is the traditional staple food.Based on this work, we can now implement genome-assisted creation of new potato varieties that will be more productive and also resistant to climate change; this could have a major impact on food security in the coming decades." 

Especially low diversity makes potato plants susceptible to disease. This can have serious, more dramatic consequences during the Irish famine of the 1840s, where for several years almost the entire potato plantation rotted in the soil and millions of people in Europe starved simply because the only cultivated variety was not available. plague of newly emerging tubers. During the Green Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, scientists and plant breeders achieved large increases in the yields of many of our major basic crops, such as rice and wheat.

Source: Agrolink