| Potato is the fourth largest grain crop in China, and is also an important cash crop for both food and
vegetable use. It is of great significance for guaranteeing national food security, enriching vegetable basket and increasing
farmers’income. Potato flesh color in nature presents the changes from white to cream, yellow to orange, and red to
purple, while carotenoids, as natural colorants, are the main pigment materials to form yellow, orange or red colors.
with important biological functions. They not only play an important role in tuber color change during potato growth and
development, but also affect its nutritional quality and commercial value. In recent years, the goal of potato genetics
and breeding is developing towards improving the nutritional quality of tubers, and the cultivation of potato varieties
with high carotenoid content has gradually become an important direction of breeding. This review provides an overview
of the varieties and contents of carotenoids from potato germplasm including cultivated tetraploids and wild diploid,
cloning and functional analysis of alleles and haplotypes of key genes〔（β-carotene hydroxylase（Chy）, zeaxanthin
cyclooxygenase（zep）, lycopene ε-cyclooxygenase（LCYe）〕in carotenoid synthesis and metabolism pathway and the improvement of potato carotenoid content by conventional breeding and fortifying methods; and the identification of
key regulation genes of potato carotenoid pathway and the utilization of wild type diploid resources of potato carotenoid is
prospected. It is of great significance for the research on the regulation and expression of genes related to potato carotenoid
synthesis and metabolism, the breeding of potato varieties with high carotenoids and the improvement of potato nutritional
quality in the future. |
