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84 POTATO GROWER | JANUARY 2018 Diggin' In Diggin' In Diggin' In Diggin' In Diggin' In Diggin' In GENETICS | By Michigan State University Communications Examining the past could improve the potatoes of the future.t Deep End of the Gene Pool The old adage of looking to the past to understand the future certainly applies to improving potatoes. Examining the ancestors of the modern, North American cultivated potato has revealed a set of common genes and important genetic pathways that have helped potatoes adapt over thousands of years. The study appears in the Oct. 31, 2017, issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Robin Buell, Michigan State University Foundation professor of plant biology and senior author of the paper, says potential genetic keys that could ensure the crop will thrive in the future. "Worldwide, potato is the third-most important crop grown for direct human consumption, yet breeders have struggled to produce new varieties that outperform those released over a century ago," Buell says. "By analyzing cultivated potato and its wild relatives using modern genomics approaches, we were able to reveal key factors that could address food security in 21st century agriculture." Cultivated potatoes, domesticated from wild Solanum species, a genetically simpler diploid (containing two complete sets of chromosomes) species, can be traced to the Andes Mountains in Peru. While the exact means of the potato migration are unknown, the crop has essentially spread worldwide since its domestication some 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. As potatoes were taken from the more equatorial regions of Peru and Bolivia to the southern parts of South America, they became adapted to longer summer days in Chile and Argentina. Diversity of pigmentation and shape is exhibited in these potatoes seen in Cusco, Peru. Photo by Robin Buell This map shows the history of potato domestication and breeding across the world.