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.

Origins, species and cytology. Theory and methods of genetical analysis. Cellular and molecular genetics. Environmental stress, morphology and quality. Inheritance of resistance to pests and diseases. Potato breeding.

Potato is the world's fourth food crop after maize, wheat, and rice and is a staple crop in many diets throughout the world with a high source of proteins, carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamins. Biotic and abiotic stress factors give rise to decrease in yield. That is why improvement of new cultivars resistant to stress factors by conventional and biotechnological methods is extremely important. The most important factor in production increase is the use of healthy seed tubers along with using drought-, heat-, and salt-tolerant cultivars. On the other hand, protection and storage of surplus crops, which are the most important stage in its marketability, are the main problems in potato. In this book, all these issues are discussed, and it is hoped that the book Potato will help growers and researchers in solving problems in potato cultivation.

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.