Creating a super spud

As climate change continues to threaten sustainable food supplies around the world, scientists from McGill University are looking for ways to improve the resilience and nutritional quality of potatoes. The researchers, led by Professor Martina Strömvik, have created a potato super pangenome to identify genetic traits that can help produce the next super spud.

According to Strömvik, the super pangenome sheds light on the potato’s genetic diversity and what kinds of genetic traits could be bred into modern-day crops to make it better. The extensive collection of genome sequence data represents 60 species of potato and its relatives.

A genome is an organism’s complete set of genetic instructions (DNA sequence) while a pangenome aims to capture the complete genetic diversity within a species and a super pangenome also includes multiple species.

The potato is one of the most important crops globally and is a staple food source for many people around the world.

“Wild potato species can teach us a lot about what genetic traits are critical in adapting to climate change and extreme weather, enhancing nutritional quality and improving food security,” Strömvik said.

The researchers used supercomputers to crunch data from public databanks to build the potato pangenome, including gene banks in Canada, the United States and Peru.

According to the researchers, the pangemone can be used to answer questions about the evolution of the crop, which was first domesticated by Indigenous peoples in the mountains of southern Peru nearly 10,000 years ago. It can also be used to help identify specific genes to create a super spud using traditional breeding or gene editing technology.

“Scientists hope to develop something that can defend against various forms of diseases and better withstand extreme weather like lots of rain, frost or a drought,” Strömvik said.

Image credit: iStock.com/Julia_Sudnitskaya