Project properties
Title Dissecting the interaction of potato cold tolerance and tuberization
Group Plant Breeding, Laboratory of
Project type thesis
Credits 30-39
Supervisor(s) Sara Bergonzi and Beiyu Tu
Examiner(s) Sara Bergonzi
Contact info Sara.bergonzi@wur.nl, Beiyu.tu@wur.nl

Begin date 2023/09/01
End date 2026/09/01
Description Potato is regarded as a cold sensitive crop and suffers cold stress especially in (tuber) seedling stage in late spring. Agronomic practices such as late planting can mitigate the effects of early season cold stress. However, there are many potential advantages of early planting, combined with incorporating cold tolerance into our varieties. In this project we will explore genetic variation in a wide range of wild and cultivated genotypes and perform genetic analysis to identify important loci regulating cold tolerance. Additionally, we will investigate the molecular mechanisms linking cold stress and tuberization. Recently, genes in the tuberisation pathway were reported to directly affect drought and heat responses in potato and their homologues in Arabidopsis were suggested to be involved in cold tolerance through CBF-COR pathway. These results indicated the possible link between cold response and tuber development which we aim to investigate further. Moreover, we aim to explore how cold stress can impair potato growth and development. The objective of this proposed research is to have a better understanding of potato cold tolerance mechanism and how it interacts with tuber traits thus to breed cold tolerance potato without negatively impacting on yield. NPEC growth chambers will be used for cold treatment allowing high-throughput phenotyping of morphological and physiological traits.
Used skills Depending on the stage of the project: HTP phenotyping in NPEC and data analysis, genetic analysis (e.g. QTL mapping), molecular lab (gene expression analysis, molecular cloning, genome editing, etc)
Requirements PBR-30806, YPS60315 Design of Plant Breeding programs