Are you really my clone? Identity verification of the in-trust sweetpotato collection at the International Potato Center.

Figure 1. Field comparison of sweetpotato in vitro material with original mother plants that have been maintained for 30 years. A. Side-by-side field comparison of in vitro and mother plants from >400 accessions. B. In vitro plantlet. C. Example of morphologically different in vitro and mother plant of the same accession. D. Roots showing distinctive differences in flesh and skin color from plants depicted in C. Our assumption has been that the genetic integrity in germplasm collections have been pristinely maintained over the decades since collections were made despite vast changes in technology, quality management systems (QMS), improved conservation methods and infrastructure of the genebanks. For clonal genebanks, such as the International Potato Center (CIP), the biggest challenge in the last 40 years has been to maintain quality control in the genetic integrity of the accessions while maintaining a continually living collection long-term. With the advent and application of technologies, such as in vitro culture, where the initial goal was to achieve success, financial realities relied more on the success of in vitro culture and less on verification of identity of the accession. This was not unique to CIP as this was the status quo for all of us working in the early days of in vitro technology thirty years ago. Now, Quality Management Systems (QMS) are in place for process quality assurance, so that we will not repeat the mistakes of the past. At CIP, the sweetpotato collection was initiated in the late 1980’s with the donation of in in vitro cultures from AVRDV and IITA. These collections were of unknown genetic integrity and in many cases with minimal passport data. Parental material existed as potted plants for some accessions, as was the norm for material added to the collection in the 1980’s. This poster presents the first public report of a program to access the genetic integrity and to fingerprint the entire In Trust global cultivated sweetpotato collection. 1 CIP – Genebank International Potato Center, P.O. Box 1558, Lima 12, Peru