Grant: Engage Grants Program

Semences Élites du Québec Inc. is a producer of elite seed potatoes located in a protected area. As such, potatolate blight, caused by Phytophthora infestans, represent a constant threat that they must keep under control inorder to keep their certification. Potato late blight is usually controlled through an intense fungicide sprayregime, which raises serious health and environmental issues, and is not option for seed potato growers inprotected areas and/or organic producers. The use of resistant varieties represents one of the mostenvironmentally-friendly alternative, still none of the potato varieties commercially available in Canada haveadequate levels of resistance against late blight. This project aims at characterizing advanced potato varietiesfrom Semences Élites du Québec Inc. to identify those harboring multiple genes of resistance against lateblight. This will be achieved through the use of molecular markers linked with known resistance genes,together with a state-of-the-art effectoromics approach, which consist of directly testing the ability of a givenvariety to recognize a particular avirulence gene from the pathogen. This last approach could result in theidentification of novel or unknown sources of resistance, and will be helpful to identify resistance genes forwhich molecular markers do not exist. Identifying resistant varieties for release will help the company maintainphytosanitary conditions in protected areas, as well as allowing them to select resistant varieties forpropagation and final stages of field testing.