Application of Marker Assisted Selection for Potato Virus Y Resistance in the University of Wisconsin Potato Breeding Program

Potato virus Y (PVY) is responsible for the majority of seed potato lot rejections in North America. Some commercial cultivars and breeding lines have major genes for PVY resistance, but their use in North American breeding programs has been limited. Marker assisted selection of PVY resistance can increase the efficiency of identifying resistant plants and integrating resistance into new cultivars. We used markers RYSC3 and YES3-3B, linked to genes Ry (adg) and Ry (sto) , respectively, to screen 46 breeding clones and cultivars, and identified 19 resistant clones. Resistant parents were crossed with susceptible parents with good market and agronomic traits and molecular marker analysis of each family showed a 1:1 segregation ratio. The persistence of this segregation ratio over 2 years of selection and the lack of major linkage drag as assessed by a breeder rating indicated that there was no evidence of an association of PVY resistance with undesirable traits.