Potato is the most important tuber crop. In contrast to other cereal crops, potato is a clonally propagated autotetraploid crop. Due to the complexity of tetrasomic inheritance, the improvement of the potato is quite slow. To accelerate the efficiency of potato breeding and decrease the cost of production, we carried out the Upotato Plan (Diploid Hybrid Potato Breeding), aiming to reinvent potato from a tuber-propagated tetraploid crop into an inbred line-based diploid crop propagated by seeds.

At present, the team has carried out a series of basic theoretical innovations and breeding practices around the " Upotato Plan ", obtained a potato genome map (Nature, 2011), and established the largest diploid potato GenBank in China, overcome self-incompatibility (Nat Plants, 2018), and analyzed the genetic basis of potato self-incompatibility (Nature Genetics, 2019). The first generation of diploid potato inbred lines and the first conceptual hybrid have been bred, laying the foundation for the smooth development of the " Upotato Plan ".

In the future, we will mainly focus on:

(1) Research on the growth and development characteristics of potato diploid true seeds.

(2) Research and innovation of cultivation techniques for important agronomic characters of potato diploid true seeds.