Identification and Selection for Tuber Calcium, Internal Quality and Pitted Scab in Segregating ‘Atlantic’ x ‘Superior’ Reciprocal Tetraploid Populations

Developing chipping cultivars with improved tuber quality and disease resistance is a major interest for breeders and the potato industry. A popular chipping cultivar ‘Atlantic’, is desired for its high yield and gravity. However, this cultivar suffers from poor internal tuber quality and high scab susceptibility. On the contrary, cultivar ‘Superior’ is known to have excellent tuber internal quality and moderately scab resistance. In addition, this cultivar is known to have high tuber calcium as compared to ‘Atlantic’. The present study intended to generate populations that can be suitable for the genetic study of tuber calcium, internal quality, common scab, and other commercially important traits such as yield, specific gravity and chip quality at the tetraploid level. Two populations obtained by reciprocally crossing the cultivars ‘Atlantic’ and ‘Superior’ were evaluated during 2009 to 2012 at Hancock, Wisconsin. Significant genotype effects and moderately low to high broad-sense heritabilities were identified for all traits evaluated indicating that the observed phenotypic variation has an important genetic component. In addition, the parents differed significantly for all traits across trials, and most genotypes performed in between the two parents but some genotypes were more extreme than the parents. Furthermore, evidence of reciprocal effects was found for some traits. In addition to learning about the genetics of these important traits we were able to identify some genotypes that combined the commercially desired traits of the two cultivars.