The potato is the fourth most important crop in the world, being a major staple food for over one billion people. This project is aimed at developing resources for potato genomics as the first step towards identifying the key genes responsible for the health and quality of potatoes, leading to improved varieties. Specifically, this project seeks to identify the genes responsible for five traits of interest in the tuber (i.e. late blight and common scab resistance, cold-sweetening, dry matter content and after-cooking darkening).
Working with an international science advisory board, project researchers are in the process of: producing high quality full-length cDNA libraries for at least 100,000 EST sequences; generating a microarray consisting of at least 10,000 non-redundant genes; producing 20,000 tagged mutant plants for trait-screening; establishing bioinformatics operations and tools; and conducting GELS studies related to IP and regulatory/ acceptance issues significant to genomics-assisted plant breeding.
This multi-institutional project involves researchers at the University of New Brunswick, Carleton University, Solanum Genomics International Inc., Nova Scotia Agricultural College, Potato Research Centre(Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada), and the Canadian Bioinformatics Resource (National Research Council).