Genomic-wide association for heat stress tolerance in potato

• Grant number: 23/11005-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: January 15, 2026
• End date: January 14, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Agronomy - Crop Science
• Principal Investigator: Fernando Angelo Piotto
• Grantee: Fernando Angelo Piotto
• Host Investigator: Marcio F R Resende Jr
• Host Institution: Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz (ESALQ). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Piracicaba , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Florida, Gainesville (UF), United States

Abstract

In Brazil, very few research groups have been working with potato breeding for the development of new cultivars adapted to cultivation in tropical and subtropical climate conditions. However, none of them has worked with the diploid potato breeding, associating strategies that involve the molecular breeding of this species, integrated with the classic breeding. In this sense, this proposal is a pioneer, since we recently created the first potato breeding program at the University of São Paulo at Esalq/USP, being also the first group in Brazil to innovate with the research line in diploidization in diploid potato breeding, with a focus on obtaining inbred lines for heat stress tolerance. In this sense, the objective of this work is to study the genetic architecture of a tropical panel of potatoes, aiming to identify genomic regions associated with tolerance to high temperatures and regions associated with other important traits for the crop, in order to use information at the marker level, to select genotypes to be used as parents to obtain heat-tolerant diploid inbred lines. This proposal is in line with a stage of the FAPESP 2022/03224-6 project that involves genomic-wide association studies (GWAS), to select a group of promising clones for the next stage of the research project, which involves the diploidization of the best clones tetraploids to obtain diploid lines. Therefore, a panel of 384 potato accessions will be genotyped (Flex-Seq® Ex-L Genotyping) and phenotyped for heat tolerance and other traits, for GWAS studies, aiming to identify loci and map candidate genes. The panel clones come from the main potato breeding programs in Brazil, some of which were selected in works by our own research group, which have important characteristics, such as heat tolerance and resistance to diseases typical of hot weather. This work of analysis of genotypic and phenotypic data from our accession panel will be carried out at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, Florida, with the collaboration/supervision of Prof. Dr. Marcio Resende, whose research group has objectives aligned with the objectives of our potato breeding program at Esalq/USP, Brazil. It is important to point out that Prof. Dr. Marcio Resende has a lot of experience in genomic analysis, which will be essential for my training analysis in other countries, and success in completing this proposal.