A team led by Prof. Huang Sanwen at the Shenzhen Agricultural Genomics Institute of CAAS published a paper titled "Generation of self-compatible diploid potato by knocking out of S-RNase" in Nature Plants. The research overcame the self-incompatibility of diploid potatoes by knocking out of S-RNase using the CRISPR/Cas9 system. This approach provides a new way to produce self-compatible diploid potato and is also helpful to other self-incompatibility crops. The new self-compatible diploid germplasm will accelerate the basis research and genetic improvement of potato.

Generation of self-compatible diploid potato by genome editing. A, the growth of pollen tubes in the wild type (left) and mutant (right) styles. B, the fruit-setting of wild type (left) and mutant (right) plants after self-pollination