Richard G. F. Visser

Wageningen University & Research | WUR · Department of Plant Breeding

Key message Multiple QTLs control unreduced pollen production in potato. Two major-effect QTLs co-locate with mutant alleles of genes with homology to AtJAS, a known regulator of meiotic spindle orientation. Abstract In diploid potato the production of unreduced gametes with a diploid (2n) rather than a haploid (n) number of chromosomes has been w...

Background Tuber starch and steroidal glycoalkaloid (SGA)-related traits have been consistently prioritized in potato breeding, while allelic variation pattern of genes that underlie these traits is less explored. Results Here, we focused on the genes involved in two important metabolic pathways in the potato: starch metabolism and SGA biosynthesi...

In Chinese cabbage, rosette leaves expose their adaxial side to the light converting light energy into chemical energy, acting as a source for the growth of the leafy head. In the leafy head, the outer heading leaves expose their abaxial side to the light while the inner leaves are shielded from the light and have become a sink organ of the growing...

This study aims to categorize the morphological changes during cabbage (B. oleracea ssp. capitata) development, seedling, rosette, folding, and heading, and to elucidate the cellular mechanisms of the leaf curvature, essential for the formation of the leafy head. We followed the growth of two cabbage cultivars with distinct head shapes (round and p...

Background Modern cultivated potatoes have been bred for distinct market usages such as fresh eating, chip processing and starch manufacturing; however, genomic insights into this differentiation are limited. Results Here, we report a map of genomic variation encompassing ~79 million variants, constructed by genome-wide resequencing of 137 autot...

This study aims to categorize the morphological changes during cabbage (B. oleracea ssp. capitata) development: seedling, rosette, folding, and heading and to elucidate the cellular mechanisms of leaf curvature, essential for the formation of the leafy head. We followed the growth of two cabbage morphotypes with distinct head shapes (round and poin...

Multi-environment genomic prediction was applied to tetraploid potato using 147 potato varieties, tested for two years, in three locations representative of three distinct regions in Europe. Different prediction scenarios were investigated to help breeders predict genotypic performance in the regions from one year to the next, for genotypes that we...

In potato, maturity is assessed by leaf senescence, which, in turn, affects yield and tuber quality traits. Previously, we showed that the CYCLING DOF FACTOR1 (StCDF1) locus controls leaf maturity in addition to the timing of tuberization. Here, we provide evidence that StCDF1 controls senescence onset separately from senescence progression and the...

Inversions in chromosomes occur widely within plants and suppress meiotic recombination which can be beneficial or detrimental for plant breeders. Therefore, induction or reversion of inversions via CRISPR/Cas9 has been extensively researched recently. Extensive variation in inversion induction rates and sizes have been reported, from hundreds to s...

Please, find below the link to the publication, where it can be easily accessed/downloaded: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/9315/leeway-to-operate-with-plant-genetic-resources Thank you very much.

Background Genetic diversity is crucial for the success of plant breeding programs and core collections are important resources to capture this diversity. Many core collections have already been constructed by gene banks, whose main goal is to obtain a panel of a limited number of genotypes to simplify management practices and to improve shareabili...

The balanced segregation of homologous chromosomes during meiosis is essential for fertility and is mediated by crossovers. A strong reduction of crossover (CO) number leads to the unpairing of homologous chromosomes after the withdrawal of the synaptonemal complex. This results in the random segregation of univalents during meiosis I and ultimatel...

Background Tuber starch and steroidal glycoalkaloid (SGA)-related traits have been consistently prioritized in potato breeding, while allelic variation pattern of genes that underlie these traits is less explored. Results Here, we focused on the genes involved in two important metabolic pathways in the potato: starch metabolism and SGA biosynthesi...

Through a screening of a Micro-Tom tomato EMS population we found a mutant M2042 that showed decreased susceptibility to necrotrophic pathogens, Botrytis cinerea and Alternaria solani. The causal mutation was mapped through a bulked segregrant analysis and whole genome sequencing (BSA-WGS) approach. An early stop codon mutation was identified in th...

Plants with innate disease and pest resistance can contribute to more sustainable agriculture. Natural defence compounds produced by plants have the potential to provide a general protective effect against pathogens and pests, but they are not a primary target in resistance breeding. Here, we identified a wild relative of potato, Solanum commersoni...

In diploid potato the production of unreduced gametes with a diploid (2n) rather than a haploid (n) number of chromosomes has been widely reported. Besides their evolutionary important role in sexual polyploidisation, unreduced gametes also have a practical value for potato breeding as a bridge between diploid and tetraploid germplasm. Although ear...

Plants employ pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) to sense pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) or apoplastic effectors at the plant cell surface, as well as nucleotide-binding domain leucine-rich-repeat-containing receptors (NLRs) to sense effectors inside the plant cell. Breeding for potato resistance to P. infestans has focused on the...

Plant cell surface pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) and intracellular immune receptors cooperate to provide immunity to microbial infection. Both receptor families have coevolved at an accelerated rate, but the evolution and diversification of PRRs is poorly understood. We have isolated potato surface receptor Pep-13 receptor unit (PERU) that s...

Plants with innate disease and pest resistance can contribute to more sustainable agriculture. Natural defence compounds produced by plants have the potential to provide a general protective effect against pathogens and pests, but they are not a primary target in resistance breeding. Here, we identified a wild relative of potato, Solanum commersoni...

Thrips are a serious pest in many crops. In onion cultivation, Thrips tabaci is the most important, but not the only thrips species causing damage. We investigated which thrips species affects onion and related species worldwide, how much genetic variation there is within T. tabaci populations, and how this evolves. Furthermore, we determined the r...

Background Cultivated spinach (Spinacia oleracea) is a highly nutritional crop species of great economical value that belongs to a genus of dioecious plant species with both homomorphic and heteromorphic sex chromosomes. The wild spinach species Spinacia turkestanica and Spinacia tetrandra are important genetic sources for improving cultivated spin...

Plant phenotyping experiments are conducted under a variety of experimental parameters and settings for diverse purposes. The data they produce is heterogeneous, complicated, often poorly documented and, as a result, difficult to reuse. Meeting societal needs (nutrition, crop adaptation and stability) requires more efficient methods toward data int...

Tomato bacterial canker caused by Clavibacter michiganensis (Cm) is considered to be one of the most destructive bacterial diseases of tomato. To date, no resistance to the pathogen has been identified. While several molecular studies have identified (Cm) bacterial factors involved in disease development, the plant genes and mechanisms associated w...

The reinvention of potato, from a tetraploid clonal crop into a diploid seed-based hybrid crop, requires insight in the mutational load, recombination landscape, and the genetic basis of fertility. Genomics-based breeding and QTL discovery rely on efficient genotyping strategies such as skim sequencing, to gather genotypic information. The applicat...

Plants with innate disease and pest resistance can contribute to more sustainable agriculture. Plant breeders typically focus on immune receptors or impaired susceptibility genes to develop resistant crops, but these can present challenges in terms of strength, durability or pleotropic effects. Although natural defence compounds produced by plants...

Plants with innate disease and pest resistance can contribute to more sustainable agriculture. Plant breeders typically focus on immune receptors or impaired susceptibility genes to develop resistant crops, but these can present challenges in terms of strength, durability or pleotropic effects. Although natural defence compounds produced by plants...

Citation: Koseoglou, E.; Brouwer, M.; Mudadirwa, D.; Van der Wolf, J.M.; Visser, R.G.F.; Bai, Y. Identification of Two Novel Loci Underlying Tolerance to Clavibacter michiganensis Originating from Solanum arcanum LA2157. Agronomy 2023, 13, 953. Abstract: Clavibacter michiganensis (Cm) is a tomato phytopathogenic bacterium. Outbreaks of Cm can resul...

Candidate genes (CG) for Botrytis cinerea resistance described in literature were mapped on gerbera linkage maps for which several QTL for Botrytis resistance had been found previously using a rapid, low-cost platform for SNP genotyping. In total, 29 CGs were mapped in either of two mapping populations. Four CGs were mapped within the previous iden...

To explore specific components of resistance against the tomato-adapted powdery mildew pathogen Pseudoidium neolycopersici (On) in the model plant Arabidopsis, we performed a disease assay in 123 accessions. When testing the resistance in the F1 from crossings between resistant accessions with susceptible Col-0 or Sha, only the progeny of the cross...

The family of Geminiviridae consists of more than 500 circular single-stranded (ss) DNA viral species that can infect numerous dicot and monocot plants. Geminiviruses replicate their genome in the nucleus of a plant cell, taking advantage of the host’s DNA replication machinery. For converting their DNA into double-stranded DNA, and subsequent repl...

The balanced segregation of homologous chromosomes during meiosis is essential for fertility and is mediated by crossovers. A strong reduction of crossovers leads to desynapsis, a process in which pairing of homologous chromosomes is abolished before metaphase I. This results in a random segregation of univalent and the production of unbalanced and...

Genetic diversity is crucial for the success of plant breeding programs and core collections that capture this diversity are an important resource to exploit this. In this study, we present a method for constructing a core collection that integrates both genomic and pedigree information to capture maximum genetic variation in a minimum subset of ge...

Climate change seriously impacts global agriculture, with rising temperatures directly affecting the yield. Vegetables are an essential part of daily human consumption and thus have importance among all agricultural crops. The human population is increasing daily, so there is a need for alternative ways which can be helpful in maximizing the harves...

Pattern-triggered immunity (PTI) in plants is mediated by cell surface-localized pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) upon perception of microbe-associated molecular pattern (MAMPs). MAMPs are conserved molecules across microbe species, or even kingdoms, and PRRs can confer broad-spectrum disease resistance. Pep-13/25 are well-characterized MAMPs i...

The family of Geminiviridae consists of more than 500 circular single-stranded (ss) DNA viral species that can infect numerous dicot and monocot plants. Geminiviruses replicate their genome in the nucleus of a plant cell, taking advantage of the host's DNA replication machinery. For converting their DNA into double-stranded DNA, and subsequent repl...

Unlabelled: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are a useful tool to unravel the genetic architecture of complex traits, but the results can be difficult to interpret. Population structure, genetic heterogeneity, and rare alleles easily result in false positive or false negative associations. This paper describes the analysis of a GWAS panel co...

Key message We identified a dosage-dependent dominant negative form of Sar1c, which confirms the essential role of COPII system in mediating ER export of storage proteins in rice endosperm. Abstract Higher plants accumlate large amounts of seed storage proteins (SSPs). However, mechanisms underlying SSP trafficking are largely unknown, especially...

The regulation of flavonoid biosynthesis is only partially explored in pepper (Capsicum annuum L.). The genetic basis underlying flavonoid variation in pepper fruit was studied. Variation of flavonoids in fruit of a segregating F2 population was studied using LC–MS followed by quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis. Near‐isogenic lines (NILs), BC1...

Kiwifruit (Actinidia spp) is a woody, perennial and deciduous vine. In this genus, there are multiple ploidy levels but the main cultivated cultivars are polyploid. Despite the availability of many genomic resources in kiwifruit, SNP genotyping is still a challenge given these different levels of polyploidy. Recent advances in SNP array technologie...

The reinvention of potato, from a tetraploid clonal crop into a diploid seed-based hybrid crop, requires insight in the mutational load, recombination landscape and the genetic basis of fertility. Genomics based breeding and QTL discovery relies on efficient genotyping strategies such as skim-sequencing, to gather genotypic information. The applica...

In purple-fruited Capsicum genotypes, fruit anthocyanin content first increases, and later decreases upon ripening. In this study, the response of this transient anthocyanin accumulation as a function of light intensity and light spectrum was investigated. Harvested fruit at the mature purple stage were illuminated by white-red LED lights at a phot...

Plants with innate disease and pest resistance can contribute to more sustainable agriculture. Resistance breeding typically relies on the use of immune receptors or impaired susceptibility genes, but these come with challenges in terms of strength, durability or pleotropic effects. Natural defence compounds from plants are not considered in breedi...

Tomato leaf curl New Dehli virus (ToLCNDV) is a whitefly transmitted plant virus that is affecting European melon cultivation for over a decade. Since its first introduction in the Mediterranean basin the virus has been associated with significant economic losses including lower yields and cracked non-marketable fruits in Spain and other key cucurb...

A sustainably intensified (SI) organic vegetable rotation, employing plant-based fertilizers, more crops, reduced tillage, and cover crops was compared to common practice (CP) where plants were fertilized with animal manure, typically one crop was grown per season, soil was plowed and often left bare over winter. Second and third-year results are p...

Genome wide association studies (GWAS) are a useful tool to unravel the genetic architecture of complex traits, but the results can be difficult to interpret. Population structure, genetic heterogeneity and rare alleles easily result in false positive or false negative associations. This paper describes the analysis of a GWAS panel combined with th...

Plants have evolved to deal with different stresses during plant growth, relying on complex interactions or crosstalk between multiple signaling pathways in plant cells. In this sophisticated regulatory network, Ca2+ transients in the cytosol ([Ca2+]cyt) act as major physiological signals to initiate appropriate responses. The CALCINEURIN B‐LIKE PR...

Auxin is known to be involved in various developmental processes, including meristem identity, shoot branching and initiation of potato tubers. The previously identified StYUCCA8 gene in potato that exhibits a peak in gene expression after tuber induction and prior to tuber swelling was cloned and over-expressed in order to study the effects of alt...

Sterility of hybrids produced from interspecific hybridization in lilies (Lilium, Liliaceae) is a great limitation in the breeding program, especially for Lilium longiflorum, which only has white-flowered cultivars. Because modification of flower colour in L. longiflorum by conventional breeding is limited by pre- and post-fertilization barriers, w...

Melon (Cucumis melo L.) production is often restricted by a plethora of pests and diseases, including powdery mildew and downy mildew caused respectively by the fungal species Podosphaera xanthii/Golovinomyces orontii and oomycete species Pseudoperonospora cubensis. Many efforts have been directed on identification of resistant sources by screening...

Cultivated peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is one of the most widely grown oilseed crops worldwide, however the events leading to its origin and diversification are not fully understood. Here, by combining chloroplast and whole genome sequence data from a large germplasm collection, we show that the two A. hypogaea subspecies (hypogaea and fastigiata)...

In all fruit and vegetable crops, reduction in quality during postharvest storage leads to substantial losses of primary production with enormous economic consequences. Also in tomato, fruit shelf-life is an important quality trait. In this study a collection of tomato accessions, consisting of 92 S. lycopersicum landraces and old cultivars and sev...

Lily scale-explants cultured in vitro regenerate adventitious bulblets at their base. Large scale-explants (6 × 18 mm; the basal side is 6 mm) yielded more (26%) bulblet growth than small ones (6 × 6 mm). The beneficial effect of the scale was also clear when bulblets excised from scale explants were transferred to fresh medium for additional growt...

Background Septoria tritici blotch (STB), caused by Zymoseptoria tritici ( Z. tritici ) , is an important biotic threat to durum wheat in the entire Mediterranean Basin. Although most durum wheat cultivars are susceptible to Z. tritici , research in STB resistance in durum wheat has been limited. Results In our study, we have identified resistance...

There is an ongoing societal debate about plant breeding systems and their impact on stakeholders in food systems. Hybrid breeding and hybrid seed have become controversial topics as they are believed to mostly serve high-tech agricultural systems. This article focuses on the perspective of commercial plant breeders when developing new cultivars of...

Intumescence is a physiological disorder in tomato and other plant species that encompasses callus formation on leaves and stems. Next to a genetic predisposition, it has also been shown to be influenced by environmental factors like light spectrum. We grew tomato plants of four different recombinant inbred line (RIL) populations under high‐pressur...

Deciphering the genetic basis of complex traits like nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) requires understanding the genotype-by-environment (G × E) interaction and linking physiological functions and agronomic traits to DNA markers. Multi-environment experiments were conducted in different environments representing low and high nitrogen levels combined w...

Differences in growth have been reported for tomato under LED compared to HPS light, however, it is not clear if breeding specific for LED supplemental light is worthwhile. Therefore, we derived four recombinant inbred line (RIL) tomato populations from parents with contrasting growth responses to different light spectra. These RIL populations were...

Under field conditions, plants are often exposed to more than one stress factor at the same time, and therefore need to adapt to different combinations of stresses. Crosstalk between responses to abiotic and biotic stresses is known to occur, and the interaction between stress responses can be positive or negative. We studied the interaction of dro...

Most potato cultivars are susceptible to late blight disease caused by the oomycete pathogen Phytophthora infestans. A new source of resistance to prevent or diminish pathogen infection is found in the genetic loss of host susceptibility. Previously, we showed that RNAi-mediated silencing of the potato susceptibility (S) genes StDND1, StDMR1 and St...