Next World Potato Congress Webinar: 'Developing the Pipeline from Genomics to New Products' with Dr. Mark Taylor

The World Potato Congress will hold its next webinar on December 15, 2020, with Dr. Mark Taylor, Co-leader of Potato Genetics and Molecular Physiology, The James Hutton Institute, UK.

The presentation will highlight some of the challenges in developing new potato varieties that could deliver the full potential of the crop. Recent achievements in overcoming some of the obstacles to improving varieties will be reviewed briefly and important traits for the future considered.

Approaches to understanding responses to abiotic stresses will be outlined and as an example, results from heat stress experiments will be presented. Central to many aspects of yield development is the control of the potato tuber life cycle, from tuber initiation to sprouting. Recent progress in our understanding of this cycle will be described.

Dr. Taylor completed his undergraduate and Ph.D. studies in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Birmingham. After post-doctoral research at the University of London, Royal Holloway College, and the University of California, Berkeley, he joined the Scottish Crop Research Institute (predecessor of the James Hutton Institute) in 1989 to lead studies in crop molecular physiology.

The main thrust of Mark's research has been on understanding the molecular basis of quality and developmental traits in potato. A wide range of contemporary approaches, including transcriptomics, and phytochemical analysis, exploiting variation in traits of interest in germplasm collections, and using transgenic models as proof of function are being used to investigate the quality and developmental traits.
 

Previous World Potato Congress Webinars

In case you missed previous World Potato Congress webinars, you can view all webinars on the World Potato Congress Inc. website at www.potatocongress.org. WPC Inc. looks forward to interacting with you during this initiative. We welcome all your feedback via email: info@potatocongress.org.