April 2019 - 20

Battling
the Beetle
Genetic map for resistance is known,
but persistent pest continues to adapt
By Melanie Epp
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
T
he Colorado potato beetle is a
major pest throughout North
America. Damage caused by the
beetle can greatly reduce yield and even
kill plants. For decades, researchers
have been looking for ways to confer
resistance to new varieties, and some
are gaining ground.
In
Canada, Helen Tai,
research
scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food
Canada (AAFC), is working to develop a
more efficient way to select material to
speed up resistance breeding.
For 30 years now, AAFC has been
looking at wild relatives of potato from
South America to find resistance traits.
In the natural environment, there's a
lot of genetic diversity in wild species
populations, including beneficial traits,
and one of those traits is Colorado
20
Spudman.com
potato beetle resistance. Tai has worked
with a number of researchers on this
project, including Yvan Pelletier, a
retired entomologist, and breeders
David De Koeyer, Benoit Bizimungu
and Henry De Jong, the breeder
who brought in many of the diploid
resources used in the research.
The varieties were collected in
South America by the International
Potato Center
in Lima, Peru. The
center maintains these germplasm
resources for use in breeding. Some
are conserved in the Andes where they
are found by native communities. The
U.S. Potato Gene Bank also collects
resources. Both organizations were
sources for the material used in this
study, said Tai.
In the project's early days, Pelletier
took the wild species and put them
out into fields in Fredericton, New
Brunswick. " The thing about our
location
is
that
it's
infested
with
beetles, " Tai said. " So if you don't spray
with a pesticide in New Brunswick you
will have very little yield. It's a 30-to-50
percent loss in yield without the spray. "
Pelletier and his technician,
Catherine Clark, did the laborious job
of screening through the species to
figure out which ones had resistance.
They also conducted feeding assays
in petri dishes. In total, they tested
around 30 species, and found nine that
had resistance.
" The challenge was then to get this
material crossed with the domestic
potato, " Tai said. " The problem with a
lot of this wild material is that it doesn't
really make a lot of tubers. "
Most all of the tuber-bearing relatives
of potato require short day length to
make tubers. North American farmers
grow natural variants that don't require
short days.

http://www.Spudman.com

April 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of April 2019

April 2019 - 1
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https://www.nxtbook.com/greatamericanmediaservices/SPUD/spudman-potato-expo-2025-digital-guide
https://www.nxtbook.com/greatamericanmediaservices/SPUD/january-2025
https://www.nxtbook.com/greatamericanmediaservices/SPUD/november-december-2024
https://www.nxtbook.com/greatamericanmediaservices/SPUD/september-october-2024
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https://www.nxtbook.com/greatamericanmediaservices/SPUD/february-2024
https://www.nxtbook.com/greatamericanmediaservices/SPUD/spudman-january-2024
https://www.nxtbook.com/greatamericanmediaservices/SPUD/spudman-november-december-2023
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https://www.nxtbook.com/greatamericanmediaservices/SPUD/november-december-2021
https://www.nxtbook.com/greatamericanmediaservices/SPUD/september-october-2021
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https://www.nxtbook.com/greatamericanmediaservices/SPUD/january-2021
https://www.nxtbook.com/greatamericanmediaservices/SPUD/november-december-2020
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