Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** potato is the most widely…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** potato is the most widely consumed vegetable in the U.S. And an important staple worldwide. While cultivated potato is a cool-season crop, increased demand has led to an expansion of its production into warmer areas, such as the southeastern U.S., making the region an essential supplier of potatoes during the winter/spring. However, the potato physiology is critically affected by high temperatures, leading to losses of up to 45% of the potential yield. This project features a unique international partnership to access new germplasm and leverage elite clones selected for heat-tolerance from three breeding programs (UF, international potato center and federal university of lavras). Moreover, we propose to develop, integrate, and evaluate genomic prediction with crop growth models, as a tool to capture genotype-by-environment interactions and guide breeding decisions. These integrated models have been successfully demonstrated in row crops, but here, we propose to adapt the methods for polyploid species by incorporating non-additive effects and marker-dosage into the prediction model. To accomplish these goals, we propose to create and evaluate a multi-parental heat-tolerant breeding population (objective 1), improve the existing crop growth models to better model heat-stressed environments and heat tolerant genotypes (objective 2), and integrate the crop growth and genomic prediction models aiming at improving prediction accuracy (objective 3). Models will be validated across environments and using the heat tolerant population developed in this project. The project brings together a transdisciplinary team that will train six students/post-docs and the germplasm will be made available to other public breeders. ?