Field Crop 2025, Vol.8, No.1, 32-40 http://cropscipublisher.com/index.php/fc 34 Figure 1 Overview of the steps for potato GWAS (Adopted from Yuan et al., 2024) 3.3 Polygenic control mechanism of tuber size and yield One or two genes alone cannot explain tuber development. Studies have shown that this is a regulatory pattern involving multiple genes and distributed throughout the genome. It is said that there may be hundreds of genes involved, and most of these genes are distributed on all 12 chromosomes, like a cluster (Schönhals et al., 2017). To make it more complicated, some genes can be "interfered" or "modified" by other genes-the so-called epistasis. In some diploid potato populations, it was found that nearly 80% of yield-related QTLs had epistatic effects (Marand et al., 2019), which shows that this type of genetic interaction is very common. In addition, tuber yield and starch content are not completely consistent: some genes may be beneficial to one trait but not to another. However, some SNP sites that "take both ends into account" have been found to positively affect both traits at the same time. 4 Case study: Exploration of High-Yield and High-Quality Cultivation of potato Varieties 4.1 Background at a glance: difficulties in potato cultivation in Heilongjiang Although Heilongjiang is one of the important potato producing areas in China, the planting conditions here are not ideal. Due to cold weather, short growing season, pests and diseases, and drought, farmers often face the risk of reduced production. These problems are not just occasional, but may occur every year. Traditional breeding methods are not efficient and often unable to cope with these complex factors (Nahirñak et al., 2022). At present,
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