Genetic Diversity and Breeding of Taro Cultivars

Taro (Colocasia esculenta) is a globally significant root crop cultivated across tropical and subtropical regions. Its genetic diversity encompasses a broad spectrum of diploid and triploid forms, reflecting a history of both sexual reproduction and clonal propagation. Traditional landraces maintained by smallholder farmers exhibit extensive variation in corm morphology, disease resistance and nutritional quality, underscoring the crop’s adaptability to diverse agro-ecological niches. Modern breeding efforts have increasingly harnessed molecular markers and genomic approaches to characterise population structure, detect loci underlying key traits and establish core germplasm collections. Target traits include resistance to taro leaf blight, yield stability under variable environmental conditions and enhanced starch or micronutrient content. Integrating genome-wide association studies with participatory selection and controlled crosses accelerates the development of improved cultivars. Conservation of under-utilised allelic diversity, coupled with strategic crossing designs, underpins durable resistance and adaptation, thereby securing taro’s role in sustainable food systems.

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Genetic Diversity and Breeding of Taro Cultivars publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in genetic diversity and breeding of taro cultivars across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Landrace: A traditional crop cultivar developed and maintained by farmers over generations, adapted to local conditions.

Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) marker: A genomic variant at a single base pair used to assess genetic diversity and associate alleles with traits.

Genome-wide association study (GWAS): An approach linking genetic variants across the genome to phenotypic traits in a diverse population.

Diallel cross: A breeding design in which all possible crosses are made among a set of parents to estimate combining abilities and inheritance patterns.

Core germplasm collection: A representative subset of accessions capturing the majority of genetic diversity for efficient conservation and breeding.

References

1. Genotype by Phytophthora colocasiae isolate interaction in breeding for resistance to taro [Colocasia esculenta var esculenta (L.) Schott] leaf blight disease in Ghana. Heliyon (2023).
2. Detection of the local adaptive and genome-wide associated loci in southeast Nigerian taro (Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott) populations. BMC Genomics (2023).
3. Genetic diversity and population structure of eddoe taro in China using genome-wide SNP markers. PeerJ (2020).