TOWARDS MARKER-ASSISTED BREEDING OF IMPROVED PURPLE-SWEETPOTATOES FOR PROCESSING

The project is an integral part of a R&D effort in vegetables and specialty crop for the research arm of the land-grant program, andhas the following specific objectives.to evaluate the cultivation potential of a newly selected purple-sweetpotato line,to develop a back-cross or F2 mapping population segregating for the anthocyanin content and for the texture of sweetpotatoes,to develop a Genotyping-By-Sequencing platform using the homoeolog-locus-specific or -differentiable COSII-amplicon markers,to map QTLs modulating the anthocyanin content (and possibly the texture) of sweetpotatoes, and identify linked molecular markers.The project will also strengthen our plant genomic research capacity, which was established with the partial support from a precious CBG project, and build some 'soft' capacity in forms of effective workflows, procedures, and sequence data analysis pipelines etc.