Biotechnology in potato variety development

Conventional potato breeding has been very successful in variety developmen t. Potato is an interesting crop in the sense that adaptation breeding is n ot aimed only for the agroecological demands of a region but also needs to respond to the local consumer preferences more than is the case in other cr ops. An indication of the success in conventional breeding is that for exam ple in Finland there are 30 entries in the variety list including both inte rnational and national potato varieties. Potato as a genetic system is, how ever, quite demanding and progress in breeding is slow. Thus, an interestin g option to add value to the existing cultivars and breeding lines is to us e the tools of biotechnology, both cellular and molecular, for further impr ovement. Potato has been a pioneering species for tissue culture work, beca use of its good regeneration capacity. Protoplast culture has been applied to expand the germplasm utilization and over 20 interspecific symmetric som atic hybridizations have been reported. Since the first reports of genetic transformation of potato in late 80's there has been tremendous development in transgenic improvement of potato both in terms of resistance and qualit y traits. Varieties are already in commercial production and new innovation s are being developed in many research groups and companies. It is argued t hat the transgenic approach is going to expand the range of potato varietie s in terms of agronomic and quality traits as well as for new industrial pr oducts exponentially in the near future.