Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
16
Traditional Breeding and
Cultivar Development
Richard Novy*
USDA-ARS, Aberdeen, Idaho, USA
The history and origin of cultivated potato have
been thoroughly detailed by Brown and Hen-
fling (see Chapter
1,
this volume), with Bradshaw
(2007a,b) also having reviewed the domestica-
tion, evolution, and germplasm resources of
cultivated potato. Both book chapters are recom-
mended for their detailed reviews and provide
the reader with the necessary background on
the history and ascent of potato to its current
role as the world's most important non-grain
food crop. This chapter details the contributions
that potato breeding and cultivar development
have made to the global acceptance of potato as
a major food crop, the unique characteristics of
potato that impact its breeding, the emerging
issues of importance in cultivar development,
and the methodologies used in traditional po-
tato breeding.
landrace potato cultivars from the Andean re-
gions of South America and the lowlands of
south-central Chile, respectively (Ames and
Spooner, 2008; also see Chapter
2,
this volume).
The catastrophic late blight epidemic of the 1840s
spurred the introduction of new germplasm and
the development of new cultivars by primarily
farmers, hobby breeders, and seedsmen (Brad-
shaw, 2007a). One of the more notable breeders
of the time was Chauncey Goodrich, a minister
from Utica, New York. Goodrich received eight
cultivars from Panama in 1851, the best of
which he named Rough Purple Chile, believing
that the cultivar's origin had originally been
Chilean. The impact of the introduction of
Rough Purple Chile is profound, with 100% of
44
“prominent” North American potato culti-
vars (minimum of 200 acres of US seed) having
this cultivar represented in their ancestry; it is
also represented in the ancestry of European
cultivars such as Imperator, Richter's Jubel, and
Busola (Love, 1999). Garnet Chile was a progeny
of Rough Purple Chile, and was successful both
as a cultivar and as a parent in breeding; Early
Rose being a direct descendant. It was from a sin-
gle fruit of Early Rose that Luther Burbank ob-
tained a seedling with high merit that he sold to
a Massachusetts seedsman for US$150. Using
this money, Luther Burbank moved and settled
in California, taking ten tubers of his Burbank
16.1 History of Potato Breeding
and Cultivar Development
The first reports of directed breeding in potato
with hybridizations made between cultivars
were made in the early 19th century and were
attributed to Knight (1807) and Knott in about
1810 (Glendinning, 1983). Potato cultivars at
this time appeared to consist of an assemblage of
