Germplasm Sets

Breeding efforts of CIP’s potato breeding program using germplasm of wild species, landraces and improved material have resulted in the development of two advanced populations with specific adaptation to the most important agro-ecologies of the tropics and subtropics: the Highland-Tropics Adapted Late Blight Resistant Population and the Lowland Sub-Tropics Virus Resistant Population. The Highland-Tropics Adapted Late Blight Resistant Population combines high levels of resistance to late blight with economically important traits such as tuber yield, tuber quality, processing and improved adaptation to warm environments and mid-season maturity (90 day growing period under short day length conditions). The Lowland Sub-Tropics Virus Resistant Population involves clones with resistance to the most important virus diseases (PVY, PVX and PLRV) of potato and adaptation to warm, arid environments with early maturity under short days and mid-maturity under long days.

To promote the exchange and evaluation of CIP’s advanced clones, 13 subsets of clones were created (Gastelo et al. 2014; Table 1). These subsets or “nurseries” offer trait combinations such as adaptation to tropical, subtropical and temperate regions of different altitudes, tolerance and/or resistance to biotic and abiotic constraints as well as agronomic or tuber quality traits: for tropical highland environments, resistance to late blight and virus is combined with drought tolerance while for mid-elevation tropics late blight resistance is matched with heat tolerance and in case of subtropical highlands, late blight resistance goes with a short to medium growth cycle. Generally, the nurseries contain clones that have the potential to counterbalance the effects of increasing temperatures in both traditional and new areas of potato cultivation.

Table 1: Nurseries (subsets) with advanced potato clones adapted to the most important agro-ecologies of the tropics and subtropics

# Nursery Code Name Nursery Name # of clones
1 PLsVN Potato Lowland Subtropics Virus Resistant Nursery 12
2 PLsVDN Potato  Lowland Subtropics Virus Resistant and Drought Tolerant Nursery 17
3 PLsVHtN Potato Lowland Subtropics Virus Resistant and Heat Tolerant Nursery 18
4 PTVN Potato Temperate Virus Resistant Nursery 18
5 PMLbN Potato Mid-elevation Tropics Late Blight Resistant Nursery 10
6 PMESVrN Potato Mid-elevation Subtropics Virus Resistant Nursery 11
7 PMEVrN Potato Mid-elevation Temperate Virus Resistant Nursery 17
8 PHLbN Potato Highland Late Blight Resistant Nursery 18
9 PHLbDN Potato Highland Tropics Late Blight Resistant  and Drought Tolerant Nursery 15
10 PHLbVN Potato Highland Tropics Late Blight Resistant  and Virus Resistant Nursery 16
11 PHBWEN Potato Highland Bacterial Wilt Nursery 9
12 PHSSMGC Potato Highland Subtropics, Short-medium Growth Cycle Nursery

(90 days from planting to harvest)

18
13 IPSFTE Improved Potato Set for Tropical Environments 22

These subsets are useful for further crop improvement, variety release or to increase production and productivity in farmers fields and are available from CIP genebank at:

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