Potato is our economically most important vegetable crop, generating $1.2B in farm gate receipts and exports of $1.6B in 2016. Canada is undergoing a recent growth in potato production with construction of new processing plants and needs a robust supply chain to meet the demand. New potato varieties are needed that have increased tuber quality and yield, adaptation to climate change and improved environmental sustainability. The process of potato breeding, selecting parents and progeny, is currently slow, but new advances in genome sequencing and precision agriculture can accelerate the process.
The goal of this project is to develop the backbone technologies for a ground-breaking Canadian potato breeding system, employing a spectrum of recent advances in genomic selection (GS) to improve and accelerate Canadian potato breeding. The impacts of this project will be delivered through new optimized potato varieties that: sustainably increase agricultural productivity, adapt and build resilience to climate change, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and are optimized for market (taste, appearance, storage and processing). The project team includes principal investigators from McGill University, Université Laval, and AAFC (the primary potato breeder in Canada), as well as co-investigators from the Consortium de recherche sur la pomme de terre du Québec, and the private research and development company Progest. The project is structured around five inter-related activities, ranging from the development of the GS tool, to increasing the precision of the tools through integration of detailed genotyping/haplotyping, phenotyping and envirotyping data.
The deliverables for this project sum into an innovative genomic selection-driven potato breeding system that develops superior varieties in roughly 60% of the time of conventional breeding for a fraction of the cost per variety, a revolution in Canadian potato breeding.
Lead Genome Centre: Génome Québec
Partners: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), McGill University, Progest 2001, Consortium de recherche sur la pomme de terre du Québec (CRPTQ)
Co-investigators:
| Helen | Tai | Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) |
| Kyle | Gardner | Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) |
| Charles | Goulet | Université Laval |