Molecular genetic and anatomical characterization of potato tuber skin appearance
Authors: Ginzberg Idit , De Jong Walter 
Published: December 2021

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) skin is composed of suberized phellem cells, the outer component of the tuber periderm. The focus of the proposed research was to apply genomic approaches to identify genes that control tuber skin appearance - smooth and shiny skin is highly preferred by the customers while russeted/netted skin potatoes are rejected. The breeding program (at Cornell University) seeks to develop smooth-skin varieties but has encountered frequent difficulties as inheritance of russeting involves complementary action by independently segregating genes, where a dominant allele at each locus is required for any degree of skin russeting. On the other hand, smooth-skin varieties frequently develop unsightly russeting in response to stress conditions, mainly high soil temperatures. Breeding programs in Israel aimed towards the improvement of heat tolerant varieties include skin quality as one of the desired characteristics. At the initiation of the present project it was unclear whether heat induced russeting and genetically inherited russeting share the same genes and biosynthesis pathways. Nevertheless, it has been suggested that russeting might result from increased periderm thickness, from strong cohesion between peridermal cells that prevents the outer layers from sloughing off, or from altered suberization processes in the skin. Hence, the original objectives were to conduct anatomical study of russet skin development, to isolate skin and russeting specific genes, to map the loci that determine the russet trait, and to compare with map locations the candidate russet specific genes, as well as to identify marker alleles that associated with russet loci. Anatomical studies suggested that russet may evolve from cracking at the outer layers of the skin, probably when skin development doesn’t meet the tuber expansion rate. Twodimensional gel electrophoresis and transcript profiling (cDNA chip, potato functional genomic project) indicated that in comparison to the parenchyma tissue, the skin is enriched with proteins/genes that are involved in the plant's responses to biotic and abiotic stresses and further expand the concept of the skin as a protective tissue containing an array of plantdefense components. The proteomes of skin from heat stressed tubers and native skin didn’t differ significantly, while transcript profiling indicated heat-related increase in three major functional groups: transcription factors, stress response and protein degradation. Exceptional was ACC synthase isogene with 4.6 fold increased level in the heat stressed skin. Russeting was mapped to two loci: rusB on chromosome 4 and rusC on chromosome 11; both required for russeting. No evidence was found for a third locus rusA that was previously proposed to be required for russeting. In an effort to find a link between the russeting character and the heat-induced russeting an attempt was made to map five genes that were found in the microarray experiment to be highly induced in the skin under heat stress in the segregating russet population. Only one gene was polymorphic; however it was localized to chromosome 2, so cannot correspond to rusB or rusC. Evaluation of AFLP markers tightly linked to rusB and rusC showed that these specific alleles are not associated with russeting in unrelated germplasm, and thus are not useful for MAS per se. To develop markers useful in applied breeding, it will be necessary to screen alleles of additional tightly linked loci, as well as to identify additional russet (heat-induced and/or native) related genes.