Unlikely heroes on the long and winding road to potatoinbreeding

Conversion of potato from a tetraploid, heterozygous, vegetatively propagated crop to a diploid F1hybrid, propagated via botanical seed, would constitute a considerable advance for global agriculture,but faces multiple challenges. One such challenge is the difficulty in inbreeding potato, which involvespurging deleterious alleles from its genome. This commentary discusses possible reasons for thisdifficulty and highlights a recent sequence-based effort to classify SNP variation, in potato germplasm,according to its deleterious potential. Tools and strategies connected to this database may facilitatedevelopment of F1 hybrids.