Once hybrid breeding of potatoes has been successful, the next step will be to produce potato seed.
Hybrid breeding
Preparing for the Champions League
Harnessing the full potential of hybrid breeding is one of the playing fields in our Strategic Planning 2035. But how do we actually get ready for that as a team?
“After the game is before the game” – a soccer maxim that applies equally to our breeding work. Although several of our crops, such as corn, sugarbeet, rye and oilseed rape, are major-league hybrid players, others like wheat, barley and potatoes are still sitting on the sideline. Our plan is to make them match-fit.
We use hybrid breeding every day at KWS and it’s a firm part of our success. Thanks to our breeding progress, we’ve experienced a huge upswing in recent years, in particular for corn and oilseed rape (see “A guerrilla crop becomes market leader”, insideKWS 02.24). However, an important point to note in hybrid breeding is that preparation in the training camp requires time, know-how and investments (see the info graphic “How hybrid breeding works”, insideKWS 02.25). Yet once the program is established, it can be much faster than conventional breeding, especially as regards traits.
“In order for our hybrids to thrive commercially, we need successful programs that can then be tailored and optimized for individual markets,” says Harold Verstegen, Strategic Program Lead. “With the investments we’ve made, we feel confident about competing in the barley, wheat and potato hybrid arenas. That’s why they’re included in our SP35. However, that doesn’t mean we’re already defining a precise timetable for this, as this is a natural biological process that can be recalcitrant.”
BARLEY
Hybrid barley is already making its mark in the game: We launched the first hybrid in the UK back in 2024. The challenge: Barley is a classical self-pollinator. This means the pollen does not have to travel far to reach its own flowers. However, in barley we have a well-functioning male sterility system that is needed for cross-plant pollination. Adapting barley to do this efficiently (such as out-crossing crops like corn, sugarbeet or rye) is a real challenge.
Following the UK, Germany, France and other countries are planned as the next markets for hybrid barley (see “Architect for hybrid barley”, insideKWS 02.25).
WHEAT
There were lengthy deliberations as to whether developing hybrids was also feasible for wheat, with many failed attempts since the 1970s. Wheat pollen is heavier than that from barley and stays viable for a shorter time, all big handicaps in cross-pollination during basic seed production. However, we saw an opportunity to use another type of sterility system that would overcome some of those obstacles: KWS has chosen to use the BLA system, for which a prototype already existed. We then co-developed an improved version in close collaboration with the University of Sydney. BLA stands for “blue aleurone,” a natural blue pigmentation of the outer aleurone layer in wheat grains. The beauty of the BLA system is that the female parent grows and self-pollinates like a conventional wheat line, while producing both white and blue grains. Blue grains represent fertile plants and are used to maintain the female line, while the white grains are used for the actual production of hybrids. They are male-sterile, i.e. they do not produce pollen, and can be combined with any wheat plant as a male. Ideally, this is a plant with good male characteristics as well as a good combination for other desired traits.
Although the initial BLA concept originated from the 1980s, its development took over 10 years of collaboration with the team in Sydney. “You have to think long term in hybrid breeding,” says Harold. “The industry has worked for many decades to improve hybrid breeding in corn, and even longer for sugarbeet and rye – now we’re training the other crops, like wheat.”
POTATOES
Breeding potatoes is particularly challenging: For barley and wheat, the main challenge is to enable commercially viable hybrid seed production because both species are self-pollinating. For the potato (as an out-crossing species), the challenge is to develop inbred lines.
Typically, we aim to stabilize genetic traits with favorable characteristics while recombining other genetic structures to achieve improvements with every cross. Today’s potato varieties are tetraploid, meaning they have four sets of chromosomes. Each trait is therefore present in up to four different forms. When they’re crossed, the traits consequently split far more, and there is more phenotypic variation from generation to generation. Our approach for hybrid breeding is therefore to create diploid potatoes as parental lines. The challenge: Most diploid potatoes are self‑incompatible, making the creation of fully homozygous inbred lines difficult. Even when self‑compatibility alleles are present, early inbreeding generations exhibit reduced vigor, low fertility and frequent (male) sterility. This leads to a big bottleneck in the breeding program as many initial crosses will not lead to usable inbred lines.
Once our game plan is ready for diploid hybrid potatoes, they will become our starting material for the real game-changing challenge: “True potato seeds” (TPS).
Traditionally, potatoes are multiplied and planted as seed tubers. Our goal is to use botanical seed (TPS) instead of tubers. This has major advantages in production (a 10.000-fold multiplication rate instead of 10-fold), in storage (from less a year to at least three years), in logistics (half a sugarbeet package per hectare instead of truckloads) and very importantly in phytosanitary restrictions (from annual quarantine procedures to lot inspection). However, this is a huge challenge agronomically – potatoes now have to grow from seeds and not tubers, which means new learnings for an established crop. Direct‑sown true potato seeds also come with their own challenges that we need to tackle: low emergence, high sensitivity to environmental stress, and slow early canopy development.
We have been working on all these challenges in the last 10 to 15 years and have made progress in each and every topic. Our next step is to combine all this progress in first experimental products (prototype varieties) and to work on achieving consistent yields and quality. After that, official trials for variety registration and certification can begin.
“Barley, wheat and potatoes have the potential to become tomorrow’s top players,” says Harold. “Because of our breeding expertise and closeness to the market we know what to do. With our ambition and dedication, we’ll get these “new” crops fit for the Champions League.”
© KWS SAAT SE & Co. KGaA 2026
