Wild relatives of potato may bolster its adaptation to new niches under future climate scenarios

Abstract

Food production strategies and patterns are being altered in response to climate change. Enhancing the adaptation of important food crops to novel climate regimes will be critical to maintaining world food supplies. Climate change is altering the suitability of production areas for crops such as potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) making future productivity, resilience, and sustainability of this crop dependent on breeding for climate adaptation, including through the introgression of novel traits from its wild relatives. To better understand the future production climate envelopes of potatoes, and the potential of its wild relatives to contribute to adaptation to these environments, we estimated the climate of potato in four future climate scenarios and overlapped the current climate of 72 wild relative species and potato with these future climates. We discovered a shift of up to 12.5% by potato from current to novel climate by 2070 and varying magnitudes of overlap by different wild relatives with potato, primarily driven by the extent of endemism. To address the threat of novel climate on potato production and with the wealth of data available for the agrobiodiversity in potato wild relatives, we systematically developed a prioritization value inspired by the logic of the breeder's equation for locating potentially beneficial species possessing local adaptability, climatic plasticity, and interspecific crossability. In doing so, 26 unique species by discrete climate combinations are found, highlighting the presence of unique species to use in adapting potato to changing local climates. Further, the 20 highest prioritized values belong to diploid species, enforcing the drive to shift into diploid breeding by the potato research community, where introgression of the local climate adaptability traits may be more streamlined.

Matches and mismatches between the global distribution of major food crops and climate suitability

“…These findings have major implication for agricultural science and breeding programmes that increasingly look at crop wild relative as promising reservoir of genetic diversity to enhance crop adaptation to heat or drought (e.g. [21,24,50,51]). Accounting for differences in climate suitability between crops and their wild progenitors will be a critical issue for the development of novel crop varieties from these wild species.…”

Adapting perennial grain and oilseed crops for climate resiliency

“…Changing distributions will impact infection potential, this will require new descriptions of interactions between pathogens and crops (Chaloner et al., 2021; DeLucia et al., 2012; Shaw & Osborne, 2011). Predictions for tropical areas (even under conservative emission scenarios) indicate that major production regions could experience novel climate conditions not yet experienced on earth (Fumia et al., 2022; Pugh et al., 2016), which makes the translocation of species unfeasible unless appropriate adaptation techniques (e.g, breeding) occur (Corlett, 2012 ). For many temperate regions, climate change is expected to increase temperatures and decrease available moisture at lower latitudes, which is a situation where the success of crop translocation is more likely as there are many warm season species that can be moved without disrupting current infrastructure (Pugh et al., 2016).…”

“…For example, the increased uncertainty from climate change may increase risk aversion where farmers may be interested in using more stable varieties which may be more stress tolerant (Anwar et al., 2013). This increased uncertainty makes genetic improvement a particularly attractive solution, using germplasm collections (Heider et al., 2021), crop wild relatives (Fumia et al, 2022), introducing new traits like perenniality (Sanford et al, 2021), and domestication of new crops (DeHaan et al., 2016). While the threat from climate change is generally being addressed by “policy”, stakeholder adaptation mechanisms are generally slow moving (Berrang‐Ford et al., 2021).…”

Raman spectroscopy detects chemical differences between potato tubers produced under normal and heat stress growing conditions

“…Around 12.5% of the current potato production regions are projected to shift ('climatic shift') in 2070 compared to the 1970-2000 period. Thus, to maintain the current production level, there is a need to increase production by 44 million tonnes from the current acreage, or bring 2.1 million hectares under potato production, given new climatic conditions (Fumia et al, 2022). Specific gravity, tuber dry matter, starch, and reducing sugars are important quality attributes in potatoes and are especially critical considerations in the case of processing market classes (Islam et al, 2022).…”