The project “Crop Wild Relatives (CWR)-derived potatoes for climate change resilience of farming communities in Kenya and Peru” is being carried out by the YANAPAI Group and the International Potato Center (CIP). The project is scheduled to take place in Kenya and Peru from 2018 to 2020.
The aim of Phase II of this project is to validate and advance climate-change resilient pre-bred potato selections developed in Phase I, in target environments with joint decisions involving breeders, farmers and partners, toward variety release and uptake by vulnerable farming communities. Phase II will validate and incorporate Late blight (LB) resistance and drought tolerance from CWR- derived pre-breeding hybrid material into advanced heat-tolerant breeding populations and into new and self-compatible lines to enable hybrid breeding by means of creating 2x inbred lines. Trait preferences and appreciation of LB and Bacterial wilt (BW) resistant tetraploid bred material will be assessed in target environments in Peru and Kenya. Meanwhile, drought tolerance from CWR sources identified in Phase I will be validated in Peru and introduced into the cultivated genepool. This project responds to the expectations of developing pre-bred material incorporating the traits required to further adapt potato to climate change and helping poor farmers in developing countries to increase their food production. National programs, NGOs and farmers in Peru and Kenya will have access to new, stable, resilient potato clones and candidate varieties and thereby means to reduce risk of crop loss under climate change scenarios. Breeders will incorporate new CWR- derived germplasm into advanced tetraploid breeding populations and lines, and diploid hybrid breeding schemes promising faster delivery of new diversity to farming communities in the medium to long term.
