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Post by oxbowfarm on Dec 30, 2017 22:15:22 GMT -5
billw has tempted me a great deal with his Elwha potato which is almost unbelievably beautiful and he describes it as a culinary delight as well. The problem is it is a Criolla Rosada type that would be very hard to get tubers here since it isn't likely to tuberize till we start getting frost. Second problem is it is a typical low dormancy potato, and I need spuds to keep till spring. So I'm wondering what the best strategy is to breed dormancy into these intense color, low dormancy Andean types? I don't need them to be tetraploid, but I'd like to keep the pretty and tasty part. Can this be done? I was r eading about Solanum jamesii on Cultivariable. A spud that (possibly) stayed dormant for 39 years is pretty impressive. S. jamesii doesn't seem like a great candidate for crossing with Criolla Rosada, but the idea of super dormant spuds is an interesting avenue as well. I don't think I'm ready to start tackling wild Solanum breeding projects, as tempting as the idea is. Just throwing it out there and trying to hook Mr. Whitson.
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Post by billw on Dec 30, 2017 23:30:42 GMT -5
Theoretically, it shouldn't be that difficult to get a phureja type potato with dormancy. Crossing with high dormancy stenotomum type potatoes is easy and progeny segregate for the whole spectrum of dormancy. Unfortunately, in practice, I find that you almost always get the other stenotomum traits when you select for dormancy, which includes less vivid skin and flesh colors and the more typical potato flavors. Continuing to cross back to the phureja parent restores the color and flavor but also the poor dormancy. Still, these are not linked traits, so it's just a numbers game and enough plants for enough generations will probably get you there. My current diploid population came from a mass cross between phureja and stenotomum types and I get a lot of intergrades that wouldn't be easy to classify as one or the other. There is an additional problem with phureja/stenotomum crosses, which is that you will only have short day progeny.
Other possible approaches would be to cross to a tuberosum haploid or to cross up to a tuberosum tetraploid, hoping for 2n gametes. These would have the advantage of giving you access to the more reliable dormancy genetics of tuberosum and long day tuberization.
You could also cross to wild diploids that have dormancy, as you mentioned. I have found that S. brevicaule and S. candolleanum can introduce strong dormancy into domesticated diploids, but they also bring along a whole bunch of undesirable traits like bitterness, super long stolons, and low seed set.
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Post by nathanp on Dec 31, 2017 12:26:42 GMT -5
The USDA genebank has a handful of new diploid breeding stocks that are already adapted to long days and have dormancy. They were bred to have commercial traits including some that produce large tubers or russeted skin, or other specific traits. Those could be interesting to make crosses with and see what segregates out of them. BS 279 through BS 292 and GS 422 through 427. Also BS 296 is Tom Wagner's SKAGIT VALLEY GOLD, which also already has decent dormancy and is adapted to long days. New clones |
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Post by oxbowfarm on May 3, 2018 14:49:19 GMT -5
So I've gone ahead and gotten some various potato germplasm from the USDA, including 3 accessions of Solanum jamesii "Four Corners Potato". Two accessions from southwestern Colorado and one from Central Utah. Unfortunately two of the accessions had severe issues with damping off, so I only have two seedlings of the Utah accession and about three from Mesa Verde, Colorado. The other Colorado accession gave me a lot of seedlings, which I've potted up into individual deep pots. jamesii seedlings do some crazy stuff, the lower nodes on the young seedlings dive into the ground instead of forming new branches like a tuberosum seedling. [  |
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Post by steev on May 3, 2018 19:26:34 GMT -5
Wannabe peanuts!
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Post by richardw on May 4, 2018 1:01:56 GMT -5
So the white things in the potting medium are small tubers?
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Post by billw on May 4, 2018 13:40:08 GMT -5
I think that's perlite. Those stolons are not yet differentiated.
Incidentally, if the goal is to use jamesii to introduce dormancy to a domesticated diploid, that is going to be tricky. It is 1EBN. You would probably need to cross it through a 2EBN tetraploid first and then cross the resulting 2EBN tetraploid with the domesticated diploid, giving you a triploid.
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Post by oxbowfarm on May 4, 2018 19:48:46 GMT -5
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