Breeding R&D Will Be the Breakthrough for Making Potatoes a Staple Food
In the mid-16th century, the potato was brought from South America to Europe by Spanish colonists. By the 17th century, because of its higher yield than other grains and its ease of management, the potato had already become an important food crop in Europe and was introduced into China. Today, China has already become the country with the highest total potato production in the world. At the beginning of this year, the potato became China's fourth-largest staple food, and with the proposal of the strategy to make the potato a staple food, its position in China's grain production has become increasingly important. Can China's existing potato varieties meet the demand for staple-food use? What is the current status and prospect of potato breeding in China? With these questions, the reporter interviewed Jin Liping, chief expert of the National Potato Industry Technology System.
Jin Liping explained that potato staple-food products are made from whole flour or fresh potatoes into steamed buns, noodles and other diversified staple-food products and comprehensive-utilization products. By 2013, China had bred more than 390 new potato varieties, including fresh-eating types, starch-processing types, fried-food and whole-flour-processing types, and specialty types, with considerable improvement in yield, quality, disease resistance and appearance traits. It is believed that after comprehensive screening, some varieties can be used to develop different staple-food products. At present, more than 110 domestically bred varieties are used on a large scale in production, the vast majority of which are fresh-eating and high-starch varieties, while special varieties for fried-food processing and whole-flour processing are still dominated entirely by introduced foreign varieties.
“Grain security underpins the world, and seed lays the cornerstone”: potato breeding R&D plays a crucial role in making the potato a staple food and in the development of the industry. However, at present only a few potato varieties in China can be used to process whole flour, and most potato varieties in production can hardly satisfy the demand for staple-food use well.
Jin Liping told the reporter that the potato is a homologous tetraploid asexually propagated crop, and the cycle of germplasm innovation and variety selection and breeding is long: breeding one new variety takes about 10 years. China's potato processing industry is underdeveloped; in particular, food processing and whole-flour processing only began to develop in the 1990s, and the demand for making the potato a staple food has only just been raised.
For a long time, potato breeding in China has taken high yield and disease resistance as its main goals, the types of bred varieties are single, and there is a severe lack of various special-purpose varieties. Jin Liping said that the lack of excellent germplasm resources has always been the main limiting factor troubling potato variety breeding in China.
Jin Liping also told the reporter that due to the lack of long-term stable support and to lagging resource research and improvement, research on the excavation and utilization of favorable genes in potato wild relatives in China is still at an initial stage, breeding lacks high-quality parents, and 50% of the varieties bred so far come from 7 parents. Internationally, nearly 230 wild species and primitive cultivated species, with more than 7,000 accessions of landraces in total, are conserved; at present, only a very small amount of the above resources introduced has been conserved in a few research institutions in China.
Looking at the prospects of the entire industry, potato breeding presents both challenges and opportunities. Jin Liping stated that as long as investment in potato breeding research is further increased, the collection, development and utilization of potato germplasm resources are accelerated, and at the same time the comprehensive technology for breeding high-yield, disease-resistant and stress-resistant varieties is upgraded, breeding R&D will become the breakthrough for making the potato a staple food and for the rapid development of the potato industry.