DEVELOPMENT OF MOLECULAR TOOLS FOR DISEASE RESISTANCE SELECTION IN SPINACH

Breeding for spinach improvement requires new methods to speed up the development of cultivars with increased yield potential and disease and pest resistance. In Texas, the most yield-limiting diseases in spinach production include White Rust (WR) and recently Anthracnose, caused by Albugo occidentalis and Colletotrichum dematium, respectively. Since natural infection levels in the field varies year-to-year, conventional selection of resistant cultivars in the field is time consuming and unreliable. Therefore, in order to improve cultivar-development efficiency, the breeding program is evaluating spinach-breeding lines for disease resistance to develop molecular markers linked to resistance traits.