Abstract
The cultivated potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is currently the third most important food crop in the world and is becoming increasingly important to the local economies of developing countries. Climate change threatens to drastically reduce potato yields in areas of the world where the growing season is predicted to become hotter and drier. Modern potato is well known as an extremely drought susceptible crop, which has primarily been attributed to its shallow root system. This review addresses this decades old consensus, and highlights other, less well understood, morphophysiological features of potato which likely contribute to drought susceptibility. This review explores the effects of drought on these traits and goes on to discuss phenotypes which may be associated with drought tolerance in potato. Small canopies which increase harvest index and decrease evapotranspiration, open stem-type canopies which increase light penetration, and shallow but densely rooted cultivars, which increase water uptake, have all been associated with drought tolerance in the past, but have largely been ignored. While individual studies on a limited number of cultivars may have examined these phenotypes, they are typically overlooked due to the consensus that root depth is the only significant cause of drought susceptibility in potato. We review this work, particularly with respect to potato morphology, in the context of a changing climate, and highlight the gaps in our understanding of drought tolerance in potato that such work implies.
Highlights
Potato CultivationThe cultivated potato, Solanum tuberosum, originated in the New World, where its wild relatives can still be found from the southern United States (38◦N) to Argentina and Chile (41◦S) (Spooner et al, 2004)
It is well documented that potato is a highly susceptible to drought stress but the relative effects of premature stomatal closure and reduced ribulose bisphosphate (RuBP) production on photosynthetic rate in potato remain unknown, as do the mechanisms by which stomatal conductance is regulated during severe drought stress
The optimum potato canopy for assimilate partitioning may factor into this trade off, as scion grafts dominate partitioning under drought stress (Jefferies, 1993a)
Summary
The cultivated potato, Solanum tuberosum, originated in the New World, where its wild relatives can still be found from the southern United States (38◦N) to Argentina and Chile (41◦S) (Spooner et al, 2004). These characteristics can result in dramatically decreased yields under drought conditions, with one study reporting a 87% decrease in tuber number in the cultivar Désirée, which was unable to maintain stem height and leaf number under drought stress, both characteristics of stem-type cultivars (Luitel et al, 2015) As potatoes are such a drought susceptible crop (Schafleitner et al, 2009), climate change represents a real threat to potato production in the United Kingdom and around the world. By accelerating the rate at which desirable phenes can be identified, investigated, and understood, HTP platforms have the potential to relieve the current bottleneck in plant breeding cycles (Araus and Cairns, 2014) This is essential as a doubling of global crop production is predicted to be necessary by 2050 (Tilman et al, 2011), an increase which current crop yield improvement rates will be unable to meet (Ray et al, 2013). This review is an attempt to synthesize the field as it stands, paving the way forward for morphophysiological potato research that takes advantage of developments in functional phenomics
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