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Facilities: Lab, Field, & Greenhouse
The PPG maintains excellent research facilities.
| Lab: Housed in Christensen Labs on the UM St. Paul campus, the PPG laboratory is large and modern with all the necessary equipment for routine molecular biology and plant pathology experimentation. We maintain a substantial tissue culture collection on site as well, allowing us to preserve germplasm and individual genotypes for long term use. High throughput equipment for genomics work is readily available on campus in collaborating labs or the Biodale Facility. |
| Field: Our field facilities are equally outstanding. The PPG maintains four disease screening nurseries: |
| 1. Late Blight Screening Nursery at UMORE Park in Rosemount, MN. Because our late blight nursery is located far away from the major potato-producing areas of the state and because we plant our nursery much later than commercial producers (early to mid June), we can field inoculate with native late blight strains. Manipulation of irrigation practices in the field ensures the high humidity levels necessary for disease development. Our late planting date and subsequent late inoculation date ensure that production fields are approaching maturity before our inoculum is released. Additionally, we practice careful monitoring of late blight outbreaks throughout the state. These safeguards guarantee that our field nursery has not and will not pose a threat to any production operations in the state. To the contrary, our facility is a benefit to growers as testing grounds for materials generated by the UM Potato Breeding Program and by potato breeders throughout the country. We also serve as a testing site for the National Late Blight trials. Our tests help breeders select new varieties with built-in genetic resistances. Additionally, we are screening a large collection of wild potato species, potato + species somatic hybrids, and mapping populations to identify and characterize unique and useful late blight resistance genes. |
2. Verticillium Wilt Screening Nursery at the Northern Plains Potato Growers Association Research Farm in Grand Forks, ND. Our Verticillium Wilt Nursery is located in the Red River Valley, a major potato producing area of North Dakota and western Minnesota and is infected with naturally occurring strains of both Verticillium dahliae and V. albo-atrum. By selecting cultural practices that ensure consistently high inoculum levels (e.g. continuous potato production without rotation), we have developed and maintained a site that yields reliable and repeatable research results. The site has been used by the UM Potato Breeding Program and by breeding programs throughout the region. We evaluate research materials including mapping populations for our own program and for researchers located in Wisconsin. Coupled with our visual field assays are in vitro titer counts to estimate pathogen populations in stems of resistant and partially resistant materials. |
| 3. Early Dying Syndrome Screening Nursery at the UM North Central Research and Outreach Center in Grand Rapids, MN. Infected with native strains of Verticillium dahliae and the root-lesion nematode, Pratylenchus penetrans, our early dying nursery provides rigorous and reliable testing of germplasm for early dying resistance. In addition to materials from the UM and other breeding programs and research materials from the PPG and the University of Wisconsin, we are using the early dying nursery to evaluate a large collection of wild potato species. Both phenotypic screening data and titer counts are generated for early dying nursery materials. |
| 4. Common Scab Screening Nursery at the UM Sand Plain Experimental Farm in Becker, MN. Our common scab nursery is infested with high levels of Streptomyces spp., include genotypes that cause pit scab, a severe form of common scab. A variety of materials are evaluated in this nursery, including breeding materials from the UM Potato Breeding Program and research materials from the PPG, including somatic hybrids between potato and wild species, and mapping populations derived from somatic hybrids. We are also a testing site for the National Scab and for the Quad-State (MI, MN, ND, WI) trials. |
| Greenhouse: Ample greenhouse space is available immediately across the street. Our greenhouse space is thoroughly modern, allowing us adequate environmental control to conduct whole plant late blight assays in the greenhouse. These assays supplement our field screenings, allowing year-round testing. Currently we maintain a living collection of wild potato materials from superseries Stellata in our greenhouses. |
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