Heat Stress Resilience in Potato: Field and Storage Assessment
Potato production is sensitive to heat stress. This sensitivity contributes to the vulnerability of U.S. potato production to climate change, including projected increases in temperature more frequent heatwaves. Storage, a key stage of potato production prior to marketing, is also vulnerable to climate change. Maintaining tuber quality through the storage period is essential to grower profitability. Our overarching goal is to increase the resiliency of U.S. potato production to climate change. We are conducting research to increase the resiliency of U.S. potato production through the identification, development, and implementation of stress mitigation and adaptation tools (e.g., new management options, potato varieties with greater resilience) during production and storage stages. We conducted a set of field and storage studies that benchmark elite cultivars under variable heat stress conditions during the 2021-23 growing seasons.
Thursday, February 1
10:45am-11:15am
About the Speaker
Dr. David Douches
Dr. David S. Douches, with over 40 years of experience in potato breeding, genetics, and biotechnology, has an active potato breeding program directed toward the development of improved cultivars in Michigan for 36 years. The focus of the program is to develop new cultivars for Michigan’s potato industry by integrating new genetic engineering/gene editing with conventional breeding efforts. Key traits targeted for improvement Colorado potato beetle resistance, disease resistance to scab, late blight, PVY, and chip processing from long-term storage. This breeding and biotech effort has expanded to include diploid breeding.
