One potato, two potato: haplotype association mapping in autotetraploids

Potatoes are the world's most important vegetable and fourth most important food crop in terms of production. Breeders try to develop new cultivars that combine yield, quality and resistance to pests and diseases. Currently, the most common method for mapping plant genes involves generating populations derived from single crosses, but these detect only a small proportion of the alleles present in cultivated potato. Here, I describe the haplotype association mapping method, which allows the exploitation of biodiversity without developing new mapping populations. I propose developing a publicly available database holding genetic profiles of important genotypes (such as cultivars and advanced breeding lines), assessed with a common set of molecular markers. The genotypic profiles combined with accessible phenotypic information can then be used for testing association between markers and economically important traits.