Edwin van der Vossen was born and brought up in Africa until the age of 15. Following his dream to contribute to food security, he obtained an MSc degree in Plant Breeding at Wageningen University in 1991, and a PhD in Plant Virology at Leiden University in 1996. For the next twelve years he pursued an academic career at Wageningen University, where he was a group leader within the Department of Plant Breeding, focusing on Molecular Resistance Breeding in potato. In 2008 he switched to industry and worked as VP Crop Innovation at the plant biotech company KeyGene, operating at the interfaces between DNA technology, breeding and business development. In 2020 he became R&D Director at Solynta, the pioneer of hybrid potato breeding, where he is now, together with his team, unlocking the true genetic potential of potato.

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Keynote Details

Tuesday 30 June

Symposium 12: Novel crops design

Hybrid potato breeding: unlocking the true potential of potato

Traditional potato breeding has shown limited gain of selection for yield and other high-value traits over the last 150 years. This is caused by complicated tetraploid inheritance, long breeding cycles (8-10 years), low selection intensities per trait due to the very high number of commercial traits, the difficulty to stack traits (>20 years) and the slow clonal multiplication rate of seed tubers. Hybrid diploid breeding solves these issues due to less complicated genetic segregation, faster increase of homozygosity under inbreeding, better amenability to genomic-based approaches, easier integration and stacking of new traits as resistance genes, and faster ramp up of hybrids multiplied by true potato seeds. Replacement of the traditional tetraploid potato breeding strategy by a true F1 hybrid breeding system at the diploid level is a journey that Solynta embarked on many years ago. Major hurdles like self-incompatibility and severe inbreeding depression in diploid germplasm have had to be overcome. Exploitation of the Sli gene, which inhibits gametophytic self-incompatibility, enabled the development of self-compatible offspring, marking the start of diploid hybrid breeding. After many cycles of inbreeding and selection, highly fertile and vigorous inbred lines have been developed, enabling the development of uniform hybrids. Our commercial breeding platform is now geared towards the development of higher yielding, high quality and climate resilient hybrids. I will discuss the challenges and opportunities of hybrid breeding, and more specifically touch on the application of genomic based approaches, the efficacy of resistance gene stacking, and the utility of cytoplasmic male sterility.