Improving the Processing Quality of Potato Varieties Using Genomic Prediction

Like many countries, Ireland produces potatoes locally to satisfy its indigenous crisping industry. However, long term storage of potatoes for the crisping industry is a challenge. Potatoes destined for crisping are normally stored at 8⁰C, below this glucose accumulates leading to very dark fry colours and potential acrylamide build up. Unfortunately, sprouting occurs above 8⁰C and reduces the product quality. This demands the use of sprout suppressant chemicals such as chlorpropham, however, the EU is moving to phase out the use of such chemicals due to health concerns.  Ideally we would be able to develop potatoes that can be stored below 8⁰C without suffering from low temperature sweetening (LTS). LTS is a trait under polygenic control and consequently challenging for traditional breeding programmes, particularly when it needs to be combined with other traits such as yield and disease resistance. This is where new breeding methodologies such as genomic selection (GS) can assist traditional programmes. GS simultaneously estimates all loci, haplotype, or marker effects across the entire genome to calculate Genomic Estimated Breeding Values (GEBVs). Our goal is to use GS to generate GEBVs for processing quality at early stages in the breeding cycle, where phenotyping for this trait is not practical.