Project description:Potato wild relatives (Solanum section Petota) are a source of genetic diversity for improving traits in modern cultivars (S. tuberosum) to meet climate challenges. Potatoes are susceptible to multiple abiotic and biotic stresses and have undergone constant improvement through breeding programs worldwide. The allotetraploid S. acaule Bitter has been used to introgress cold tolerance into potato breeding germplasm. The cold challenged transcriptome of S. acaule was compared with that of autotetraploid S. tuberosum cv. Atlantic, and was found to have fewer differentially expressed genes than the latter. Specifically, subgenome 1 has less downregulated alleles compared to subgenome 2 and S. tuberosum.