This book describes the potential impact of the innovative hybrid breeding technology in potato. Conventional potato production is based on cumbersome breeding and multiplying of seed tubers. Seed tubers degenerate during the many generations of slow multiplication. Their bulkiness makes them difficult to store and transport. These issues are solved by hybrid true potato seed. Hybrid potato can help respond to the challenges of poverty, food security and climate change, especially in remote and harsh environments. Hybrid breeding will increase the turnover of cultivars in such environments once new seed systems based on hybrid true potato seed are established and regulated. With faster breeding and multiplication systems, clean seed can be produced of hybrid cultivars that respond to rapidly changing agronomic and socio-economic conditions. Public-private partnerships are crucial to facilitate the development and dissemination of hybrid cultivars that are adapted to the specific conditions and needs of the diverse types of potato growers in different environments and markets. These partnerships depend on knowledge and technologies emerging from international agro-industrial innovation systems. But next to this dominant innovation route, alternative systems are feasible with more emphasis on food sovereignty in farming systems that are less corporate and technology-driven, and more diversity-oriented.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book provides a fresh, updated and science-based perspective on the current status and prospects of the diverse array of topics related to the potato, and was written by distinguished scientists with hands-on global experience in research aspects related to potato. The potato is the third most important global food crop in terms of consumption. Being the only vegetatively propagated species among the world’s main five staple crops creates both issues and opportunities for the potato: on the one hand, this constrains the speed of its geographic expansion and its options for international commercialization and distribution when compared with commodity crops such as maize, wheat or rice. On the other, it provides an effective insulation against speculation and unforeseen spikes in commodity prices, since the potato does not represent a good traded on global markets. These two factors highlight the underappreciated and underrated role of the potato as a dependable nutrition security crop, one that can mitigate turmoil in world food supply and demand and political instability in some developing countries. Increasingly, the global role of the potato has expanded from a profitable crop in developing countries to a crop providing income and nutrition security in developing ones. This book will appeal to academics and students of crop sciences, but also policy makers and other stakeholders involved in the potato and its contribution to humankind’s food security.

The potato (Solanum tuberosum) is the world’s fourth most important food crop after maize, rice and wheat with 377 million tonnes fresh-weight of tubers produced in 2016 from 19.2 million hectares of land, in 163 countries, giving a global average yield of 19.6 t ha-1 (http://faostat.fao.org). About 62% of production (234 million tonnes) was in Asia (191), Africa (25) and Latin America (18) as a result of steady increases in recent years, particularly in China and India. As a major food crop, the potato has an important role to play in the United Nations “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” which started on 1 January 2016 (http://faostat.fao.org). By 2030 the aim is to “ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round”. By then, the world population is expected to reach 8.5 billion and continue to increase to 9.7 billion in 2050. For potatoes, the need is to increase production and improve nutritional value during a period of climate change, a key aspect of which will be the breeding of new cultivars for a wide range of target environments and consumers. The aim of the book is to help this endeavour by providing detailed information in three parts on both the theory and practice of potato breeding. Part I deals with the history of potato improvement and with potato genetics. Part II deals with breeding objectives, divided into improving yield, quality traits and resistance to the most important diseases and pests of potatoes. Part III deals with breeding methods: first, the use of landraces and wild relatives of potato in introgression breeding, base broadening and population improvement; second, breeding clonally propagated cultivars as a way to deliver potato improvement to farmers’ fields; third, as an alternative, breeding potato cultivars for propagation through true potato seed; and fourth, gene editing and genetic transformation as ways of making further improvements to already successful and widely grown cultivars. Included are marker-assisted introgression and selection of specific alleles, genomic selection of many unspecified alleles and diploid F1 hybrid breeding.

The potato is a significant food around the globe in the grand scheme of consumption. However, changes in the Earth’s climate are threatening to negatively impact the growth and production of agriculture, namely potatoes, which in turn will greatly alter the dimensions of food. Sustainable Potato Production and the Impact of Climate Change is an authoritative publication that provides the latest research on potato production in the future climate change scenario. Featuring exhaustive coverage on a variety of topics associated with food fundamentals such as, availability, stability, utilization, and accessibility, this reference work is an essential source for professionals, researchers and students seeking current research on the importance of potato cultivation.