How genomics and gene editing is reshaping our understanding of potato, a key security crop

Cultivated potato is a vegetatively propagated autotetraploid, a unique trait among major crop and model plant species. Previous genome analyses uncovered a high degree of heterozygosity and rampant structural variation resulting in a highly heterogenous genome and transcriptome with additive and non-additive gene expression. Genome analyses with wild species, landraces, and elite cultivars revealed a role for the circadian clock in domestication of potato that parallels yet is distinct from that of its sister species, tomato, suggesting a novel role of the clock for potato. In addition, recent advances in genomic technologies, coupled with gene editing, is enabling foundational work in not only understanding this vegetatively propagated polyploid species but also in converting it to a diploid inbred hybrid crop analogous to maize.

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