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Portage Russet
In November 2022, the SpudPro committee selected the name ‘Portage Russet’ for W13A11229-1rus. The name honors Portage County and has additional significance because ‘portage’ means carrying a boat between two bodies of water. Similarly, Portage Russet is a dual-purpose variety, able to meet the needs of both the fresh and frozen processing markets. FY2 seed…
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Farm to Flavor 2022
We had an opportunity to showcase two advanced specialty lines with purple skin/yellow flesh at Madison’s 2022 Farm to Flavor Event. This annual event pairs plant breeders with chefs to showcase the culinary attributes of new varieties. Pictured above is Rue Genger, a researcher engaged in participatory research for organic production of several crops,…
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Genetic architectures of vine and skin maturity
Our manuscript about the genetic architectures of vine and skin maturity is now available in the journal Theoretical and Applied Genetics. Using new software for genetic analysis of multi-parental tetraploid populations (PolyOrigin, diaQTL), we were able to connect statistical alleles from QTL modeling with biological alleles from whole-genome sequencing. . …
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Peyton wins award at the PAA
Congrats to our recent MS graduate Peyton Sorensen on being one of the winners of the graduate student research competition at the annual meeting of the Potato Association of America! Her oral presentation was titled “Development and validation of a KASP assay for the late blight resistance gene RB”.
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Farewell to Peyton and Joao
Spring can be bittersweet in our potato breeding program. On the one hand, we are preparing seed for planting, and the start of the field season brings excitement. On the other hand, we often have to say farewell to graduating students. Last week we gathered to congratulate Peyton Sorensen (second from left) on the successful…
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Single Plant Selection
Like most potato breeding programs, the first year of field selection at UW-Madison is conducted on single plants. Although single plants are not very reliable for evaluating yield, for traits like tuber shape, appearance and plant maturity, single plant observations are good predictors of clone performance. I am frequently amazed at the diversity of shapes…