Development of disease resistant potatoes, RESPOT

The purpose of the project is to develop a sustainable and durable growth in the Danish potato production through development of new Danish potato sorts, which are competitive on both the Danish and the international market.

The potato production in Denmark is standing on a burning platform, because it is highly based on the use of pesticides, and especially fungicides.

The consumption of pesticides is yearly at 2.74 kg active ingredient per hectare. A substantial reduction or maybe a total phase-out of pesticides in the long run is expected.

The project will therefore aim at developing new potato sorts that are resistant to mainly mould diseases, while at the same time yield and product quality are maintained.

One of the major challenges in the development of competitive potato sorts is to achieve an efficient selection, as disease resistance has a low heritability, since the prevalence of diseases is affected by many environmental factors. In order to handle this challenge, we will develop new potato sorts by means of more efficient methods for measuring disease resistance, and advanced genetic and genomic methods making it possible to select optimal parents, exploit both additive and non-additive genetics, map the offspring’s potential for durable resistance and adaptation to different environment conditions – including expected climate changes.