Research network investigates how future potato varieties can be adapted to climate change
The potato is one of the world’s most important food crops. A major problem for the future security of tuber yields and the high quality of this staple food is the susceptibility of potato plants to heat and drought, which are occurring more and more frequently together or in succession due to climate change. Heat and periods of drought are often followed by regional flooding caused by heavy rainfall, which can destroy the entire harvest within a few days. How the potato reacts to these multiple stresses was hardly known until now.
After four years of intensive research, an international team led by the University of Vienna is now providing important basic knowledge to make the potato climate-ready. The researchers have gained valuable insights into how potato plants react to heat, drought and waterlogging as a result of flooded fields. To this end, they took samples at critical growth phases of the potato plants and carried out measurements in order to investigate specific properties and molecular adaptation reactions that will be helpful for the future breeding of better adapted potato varieties. In the field trials with around 50 varieties, which were carried out at various climatic locations from Spain and Serbia to Austria and the Netherlands, the team was able to identify clear differences in the yield stability of individual varieties: Although many varieties often produced higher yields under optimal conditions, the sometimes extreme stress conditions of recent years showed that varieties with usually somewhat lower yields were particularly yield-stable under stress conditions. The question now was what made these varieties significantly better able to cope with extreme drought and heat.
To this end, the field trials were supplemented by experiments in greenhouses and in the laboratory, in which the stress conditions can be precisely regulated and where it is also possible to follow reactions to stress at the cellular level - quasi "live". At the University of Bonn, for example, Ute Vothknecht’s working group at the Institute of Cellular and Molecular Botany, in collaboration with the University of Durham and the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, has developed potato lines that enable the analysis of secondary messenger substances such as calcium. These play an important role in translating perceived changes in environmental conditions into cellular responses.
Through the experiments, the ADAPT team was able to observe changes in metabolism based on patterns of gene expression, hormones or metabolites and identify specific stress signatures. The researchers have thus created a valuable basis for the development of markers for the future breeding of potatoes.
