Development of Turkish Potato Varieties Tolerance to Potato Virus Y and Potato Virus X

Abstract

Potato is one of the mos t important crops worldwide. The present s tudy was conducted in Yuksel Seed R&D Center,Antalya. Approximately 120.000 seeds from different genetic backgrounds were obtained and evaluated between2008 and 2016 for developing new varieties. The aim of the research was to develop superior potato varieties tolerantto PVY and PVX with high agronomic, tuber and quality traits. Potato virus Y (PVY) and Potato virus X (PVX) areamong the mos t important viruses, causing economic crop losses in potato crop in the world. The use of resis tancegenes is the mos t effective method to control these viruses. Resis tance genes are transferred to new commercialvarieties using molecular markers that are tightly linked to resis tance genes (Ryadg for PVY, Rx1 and Rx2 for PVX).Potato lines were tes ted in replicated trials in different potato regions of Turkey (Adana, İzmir, Afyonkarahisar, Niğde,Nevşehir and Kütahya) by 8 years to es timate the genotype x environment interaction and 85 superior lines wereselected. At the end of the research 4 early season and 3 main season superior lines were submitted for regis trationas commercial varieties and 4 of 7 candidate commercial varieties were determined as suitable for French fries andwere marketed.