Europatat is part of an international consortium involved in the research project ADAPT (“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 four years (2020-2024) with a total budget of 5 million Euro from the EU Horizon 2020 program (No GA 2020 862-858).
Developing heat- and drought-stress tolerant potatoes
Potato is one of the most important food crops worldwide. However, a major threat to tuber yield security for this staple food crop is its vulnerability to environmental stresses; particularly to combinations of heat and drought, which are becoming increasingly prevalent due to climate change. Often these conditions are also followed by seasonal flooding, which can ruin the entire harvest within a few days. While there is some knowledge of responses to multiple stresses from model plant species such as Arabidopsis, similar knowledge in potato is lacking.
In the ADAPT project, the complementary expertise of ten leading academic research institutions, four potato breeders, a screening technology developer, a government agency and Europatat come together to investigate the mechanisms underlying multi-stress resilience in potato. The main objective of ADAPT is thus to identify new breeding targets and match potato varieties to specific challenging environmental growth conditions of the future.
Visit the official project’s website (adapt.univie.ac.at) and Twitter account (@eu_Adapt) for more information and updates.
