Potato Tuber Lenticels: A Review of Their Development, Structure, Function, and Disease Susceptibility

Potato tuber lenticels are essential components of the potato skin. This review draws on more than a century of published literature to give a comprehensive overview of potato tuber lenticels. This review describes the development and structure of lenticels, as well as the number of lenticels per tuber. Lenticels facilitate gas exchange between the atmosphere and the interior of the tuber, and data on lenticel permeability to oxygen and carbon dioxide are summarized. Conditions that promote proliferation of filling cells and lenticel enlargement are described in the context of laboratory experiments and observations from the field. Lenticels are potential sites of infection by plant pathogens including common scab, powdery scab and late blight. Research demonstrating interactions between lenticels and various diseases is presented, with an emphasis on potato soft rot. Many aspects of lenticel biology remain poorly understood and a few compelling unanswered questions are highlighted.