Procedure for the efficient acquisition of progeny seeds from crossed potato plants grafted onto tomato

Potato, Solanum tuberosum L. is an important crop. However, it is difficult to breed potato cultivars by applying conventional crossing methods because potato has a tetraploid genome and is vegetatively propagated. Flower formation and tuber development occur simultaneously. Many potato cultivars hardly produce any fruits after crossing and fail to produce seeds. We report an improved procedure for obtaining progeny seeds by grafting potatoes onto tomatoes. The rate of fruit formation was more than 19% when the grafted potatoes were used for the crossing experiments, whereas crossing using the ungrafted plants showed a rate of 1.1%. This result suggests that our procedure results in the easy acquisition of null-segregant progenies by crossing mutant lines. It is also expected to improve conventional potato breeding.