Blog

Last week was bittersweet, as we said goodbye to Lance (fourth from left) but also congratulated him on completing his MS in Plant Breeding and Plant Genetics.  One focus of Lance’s research was to measure the genetic correlation between the Hancock Agricultural Research Station (where we conduct our preliminary and advanced yield trials) and two commercial farms,…

The Jansky and Endelman labs are collaborating on a project to use recombinant inbred lines for genetic mapping in potato.  En route to that goal, we used the first F2 population to map 10 genes, including all 5 previously mapped genes for tuber pigmentation, the CHY2 locus for yellow flesh, the Ro locus for tuber shape, and…

Genome-wide association studies are widely used in diploid species to study complex traits in diversity panels and breeding populations, but GWAS software tailored to autopolyploids like potato has been missing…until now.  Postdoc Umesh Rosyara is the first author on a publication illustrating the features of GWASpoly, an R package we developed for autopolyploids.  You can also download…

Our paper on the first three years of the National Fry Processing Trial (NFPT) is now published in Crop Science.

Although I give presentations to potato growers and other scientists quite often, until two weeks ago I had never given a seminar to the general public about the potato breeding program.  My seminar was part of the Northern Lights Tour for UW-Madison’s Wednesday Nite @ The Lab series and received some coverage on the nightly news in Rhinelander.

In an earlier post, I discussed our efforts to select new breeding lines with genetic resistance to potato virus Y.  This is just one part of a larger strategy for virus management in the breeding program.  Another key part that has been gaining momentum in recent weeks is our tissue culture collection.  Tissue culture allows us to…