Roughly ten years ago, Dave Douches, a professor in Michigan State University’s Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences and director of MSU’s Potato Breeding and Genetics Program, led the Solanaceae Coordinated Agricultural Project, or SolCAP. The project, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to advance potato and tomato crops, gave rise to a new potato-breeding venture Douches has been exploring ever since.

Most potatoes grown in the world are tetraploids, meaning they have four sets of chromosomes. This makes breeding potatoes relatively difficult due to the high level of genes that must be crossed. Diploid breeding allows for genetic advances to happen quickly. At the diploid level, scientists can edit genes with a greater probability of achieving desired traits than they can at the tetraploid level.

For the full story, visit the Project GREEEN website.