The ADAPT consortium, led by The Faculty of Life Sciences of the University of Vienna, has successfully launched the project titled “Accelerated development of multiple-stress tolerant potato”, which aims at developing new strategies to make potatoes fit for the challenging growth conditions of the future. The ADAPT project will take place over the next four years, with a total budget of EUR5m from the EU Horizon 2020 program.

According to the consortium, potato is one of the most important food crops worldwide. However, a major threat to tuber yield security for this staple food is its vulnerability to environmental stresses, particularly to combinations of heat and drought, which are becoming increasingly prevalent due to climate change. Specialists also say that these conditions are often followed by seasonal flooding, which can ruin the entire harvest within a few days.

Europatat, the European Potato Trade Association, along with the complementary expertise of ten leading academic research institutions, four potato breeders, a screening technology developer and a government agency, will come together to investigate the mechanisms underlying multi-stress resilience in potato.

The ADAPT project is led by Dr. Markus Teige from the Faculty of Life Sciences of the University of Vienna, who explains that the potato comes from areas with a cool climate and is therefore particularly sensitive to heat. Moreover, as the tubers are growing in the soil, they are also extremely sensitive to flooding stress, which increase their vulnerability to disease. “With this project we will determine the molecular and phenotypical responses to different stress conditions, which are becoming increasingly important for potato yield under the challenging growth conditions due to climate change. Together with the breeders we will identify traits and genes that can enhance stress resilience in this very important food crop”, Dr. Teige adds.

The project’s researchers will combine molecular biology, stress physiology, systems biology and analytics with engineering and molecular breeding and include end-user driven agencies for variety testing and potato trading to translate findings. “Arising from our mechanistic understanding we aim to identify new breeding targets and matching potato varieties to specific environmental conditions. Knowledge from our research will directly reach the most relevant stakeholders and end-users feeding into breeding programs and guiding technology development for improved crop management strategies”, Dr. Teige concludes.