1) John Helgeson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison uses somatic hybridization to introduce disease resistance genes from wild potato species into cultivated potatoes.
2) Somatic hybridization involves fusing protoplasts (plant cells without walls) from different potato species using an enzyme solution, which can then regenerate into whole new potato plants.
3) Some somatic hybrids produced by Helgeson have shown resistance to late blight, early blight, nematodes, soft rot bacteria, bacterial wilt, and potato viruses, transferring useful traits from wild to cultivated species.