Evaluation of the diversity of garden potato varieties grown in Canada using Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) and morphology.

ABSTRACT Garden potato varieties grown on more than 1.5 ha are subject to variety registration to be sold as seed potato in Canada. Prerequisites for the registration of varieties, includes the pedigree and breeding history as well as a morphological description. For most varieties, no pedigree or morphological description is available and furthermore, some groups are essentially derived from one another. Therefore, a review to determine the genetic and morphological similarities and uniqueness of some of the garden potato varieties was initiated. Seven garden potato varieties grown in largest areas in Canada were genotyped using a set of 9 microsatellite (SSR) markers resulting in 6 distinct SSR profiles. Furthermore, the varieties were grown out for morphological description, providing supplementary information for the National Registration and their monitoring during the Seed Certification process. To assess further the genetic similarities of garden or heritage varieties, 84 potato varieties were genotyped and after analysis, the unique SSR profile of 62 varieties as well as the 6 SSR profiles shared by the other 22 were added to the CFIA potato variety reference SSR profile collection. Furthermore, a set of blue varieties were described morphologically to evaluate the nature of morphological characteristic variation of varieties sharing the same SSR profile. Although all 14 varieties grown show a level of morphological variation, all varieties within each group sharing a SSR profile are close to each other after phylogenetic analysis of the morphological characteristics.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author