Breeding for potato production from true seed.

摘要

Potato production from true (sexual) seed appears to be promising, especially in the warm tropics of the developing world. Potato breeding for true seed production requires changes in breeding methods and objectives. Potato breeding populations forproduction from true seed must combine plant characteristics for true seed production, and for tuber production from true seed propagules. Conventional potato breeding for vegetative propagation relies on selecting desired allelic combinations for further clonal multiplication, while breeding for potato production from true seed should be based on phenotypically uniform hybrid offspring with a high frequency of favourable heterogeneous allelic combinations. Diverse breeding schemes for improving potatoproduction from true seed are summarized and the advantages of all the schemes are compared in this paper. A synthetic tetraploid offspring from bilateral (2x X 2x) or unilateral sexual polyploidization (4x X 2x) seems to be the most promising cultivar for potato production using seedling or tuberlet propagules derived from true seed.