Potato Breeding: Theory and Practice (PDF)

John Bradshaw spent the whole of his 34-year career (1975-2009) as a plant breeder and geneticist at what is now the James Hutton Institute in Dundee, Scotland; having studied genetics and applied genetics in England at the Universities of Cambridge (BA), Birmingham (MSc) and East Anglia (PhD). He is currently an Honorary Associate of the James Hutton Institute. He worked on barley, brassicas (kale, swedes and turnips) and potatoes; doing research on the applications of genetics to plant breeding as well as breeding finished cultivars. He was particularly interested in methods of kale population improvement, the genetic basis of hybrid vigour in swedes, the theory and practice of linkage and QTL analysis in tetraploid potatoes, and breeding for quantitative resistance to pests and diseases (clubroot in kale, powdery mildew in swedes, and late blight and cyst nematodes in potatoes). He has written extensively on plant breeding and genetics and is widely travelled. He hasbeen an Honorary Fellow of the Indian Potato Association since 2008. In 2010 he received the British Potato Industry Award in recognition of his contribution to potato research and knowledge transfer. Throughout his career he was a member of EUCARPIA, the European Association for Research on Plant Breeding, and having served as Chairperson of the Section Potatoes was made an honorary member in May 2012. He is a member of EAPR, the European Association for Potato Research, and has been Co-ordinating Editor of their journal Potato Research since December 2017. His previous book Plant Breeding: Past, Present and Future was published by Springer in 2016.