Usually in Australia potatoes are grown from clones. Sometimes these are pieces of existing potatoes or small potatoes. Confusingly people sell 'seed potatoes' which are just small potatoes that are used for planting. Every plant that is grown from 'seed potatoes' are genetically identical clones.
True Potato Seed is different, they are actual botanical seeds. These are made in the same way that any plant makes seeds. Every plant that arises from true potato seed is genetically different. If you plant a dozen true potato seeds you will get a dozen different varieties of potato. If you find one you like you can grow them vegetatively from there. This is how plant breeders have come up with the different varieties of potatoes you can buy.
This year I got some True Potato Seed and grew some potatoes from those true botanical seeds. Each and every plant that grows from true potato seed is genetically unique.
This year the ones I grew were diploid potatoes, which are different from the usual tetraploid potatoes. They are more of a wild variety of potato and have not had polyploidy induced in them. They also had a huge amount of genetic diversity which I love. The seed grown potato plants looked nice and on some plants the flowers were stunningly beautiful.
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| Yield from one true potato seed grown plant, not huge the first year |
The diploid potatoes themselves were small, but most were very beautiful. The yield per seed grown potato plant was not huge in the first year, but it wasn't too bad either. If you had the space it wouldn't be overly difficult to select for higher yields and turn potatoes into an annual seed grown crop. There would be many advantages to doing this.
Each true potato seed grown plant grew distinctly different from all the rest. There were differences in flower colour, vigour of plants, stem colour, colour of potato skin, flesh colour, etc. One seedling grew runners when it was still tiny, this was a great trait as it covered a lot of ground and produced a larger crop.
The diversity among the true potato seed grown plants was amazing. Unfortunately I only took pictures of the potatoes produced from one plant. The rest tasted nice, but this one looked the best.
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| Diploid potato flowers |
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| Potato fruit containing true potato seed |
The potatoes grown from true potato seed grew, flowered, fruited, and produced a small crop in their first year. As you can see in the picture they produced fruit and seed so I can keep some 'seed potatoes' for planting the following year as well as planting more true potato seed.
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| More diploid potato flowers |
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| Several diploid potatoes, notice different flower colours |
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| Potato grown from true potato seed |
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| Some look like friendly monsters or aliens |
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| Look how much fun they are |
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| Red skin, deep yellow flesh |
I had heaps of fun growing diploid potatoes from true potato seed. I have grown tetraploid potatoes from true potato seed in the past, but this is the first time I have been able to grow diploid potatoes.
I found that the diploid potatoes tasted far nicer than any tetraploid potato I have eaten. Each plant tasted different to the others too, which was interesting. I overwintered some tubers from my plants and plan to grow them again. I also plan to grow more from seed.
Can you try and breed the potato with a tomato? They are in the same family.
ReplyDeleteIt is extremely difficult to cross pollinate potato and tomato. I am not sure if anyone has successfully achieved that yet.
DeleteYou can graft potato and tomato easily. The grafted tomato/potato plants don't ever yield as well as a potato and a tomato growing next to one another.
I have wondered if any heritable changes could be passed between different genus by grafting. I know that genetic material has been proven to cross the graft union and become heritable when the graft is between different varieties of the same species (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23546953), I am not sure if it works between different species or genera? To be honest, I am not sure how much genetic material can be exchanged, or how often you can expect a seed to have graft induced changes, and there are a lot of other questions.
Graft hybridisation breeding is certainly an area that deserves more research and experimentation. I have a few experiments on this going on at the moment.
Back to your question, I am not sure what the benefit would be of crossing tomato and potato? There is a novelty factor there, but I am not sure if there are any real gains to be made.
That being said, if this is something you are considering trying then I say give it a go. You have little to lose by giving it a shot. Please let me know how you go as I would love to hear about your success and failures!
Sure I’ll try after winter ends.
DeleteOver 2 years later and I have both the TPS and tomato seeds. I am starting right now and hopefully it works. I do live in Texas, so the weather won't be as cold to make the potato fruit, but hopefully it does since it is grown from TPS. I can also artificially male it fruit. I have successfully bred peppers, and tomatoes have much larger buds, so it should be easier. They are part of the same genus and other Solanum hybrids have been documented. My main purpose is to make a plant grow both potatoes and tomatoes without being poisonous.
DeleteThough the potatoes and tomatoes might have a lower yield, they should add up together to have a much higher yield
That is very exciting, I hope you get great success in your experiment.
DeleteAre you planning on just using domestic tomatoes, or some of the wild relatives or crosses too? There are plenty of hybrids out there that are mostly domestic tomato but have a small percentage of wild species in there, they may be worth trying too?
Are you planning on using diploid potatoes? Are you just trying modern potatoes or some of the wild relatives as well? I believe that cultivariable sells seed of several modern x wild crosses, some of those may be worth trying as you may stumble onto the right genetic combination for this to work.
This may be possible, or it may be impossible, I don't know but I would love to learn more about your attempts. To be honest, I think the more combinations you attempt the better the chances are of success.
If you can get seed set, even if it is aborted very early, you may be able to retry the following year and give it a go with embryo rescue techniques.
Please keep me informed on how it goes for you! Any results, even failed attempts, are valuable.
I actually did not think of using wild relatives, but I have luckily bought some, specifically Solanum cheesmanie and galapagos. Solanum G seems to be closely related to the commercial variety of solanum lycopersicum. Either way, they should have the same genetic "distance" to solanum tuberosum https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Maximum-likelihood-phylogenetic-tree-of-S-berthaultii-and-25-species-belonging-to-the_fig3_328599530
DeleteI do plan on using diploid potatoes. I do not think that triploids can produce seeds other than using a method that doubles chromosomes like Colchine. I am so far just using modern potatoes, but I will look into their wild counterparts.
I will absolutely update you when time comes. I actually have been researching into embryo rescue techniques for peppers.
This is actually extremely cool! Thank you
Some wide crosses are possible, but are very difficult to achieve and have extremely low success rates. For some reason (possibly metabolites crossing the graft union) they sometimes achieve a higher rate of success if grafting the different species together. Grafting could be worth a try.
DeleteCan I suggest using OSU Blue as one of the parent tomatoes that you use in your attempts. From memory it was developed by crossing (and back crossing) a domestic tomato with Solanum lycopersicoides, S chilense, and S cheesemanii. It may help you get the right genetic combination. Or it may make absolutely no difference.
I can hardly wait to hear how this goes for you!
Where can I get TPS in Australia, where did you get yours?
ReplyDeleteFound you via Pinterest. Glad I learn new knowledge about growing potatoes.
ReplyDelete