Inheritance of downy mildew resistance genes in spinach

In our country, spinach is consumed fresh, cleaned and packaged, frozen, and processed in food industry. The spinach plant has many growing advantages such as reaching harvest maturity in a short time, fewer cultural processes applied, and being grown all year long. The most devastating and economical disease in spinach cultivation is spinach downy mildew (Peronospora farinosa f. sp. spinaciae). Spinach downy mildew creates symptoms on spinach leaves, reduces leaf quality, and therefore yield losses. Since the leaves are the consumed part of spinach, it is very important to fight against this disease. Fight against spinach mildew is done with cultural measures and chemical control. The use of resistant varieties in the fight against spinach mildew is considered an environmentally friendly and economical method. In this study, in the first year, a universal Viroflay cultivar sensitive to all races was crossed with a IG-101 cultivar, resistant to 17 strains of Peronospora farinosa f. sp. spinaciae, and at the same time, IG-101 cultivar was self-pollinated. In the second year, hybrid and self-pollinated spinach plants were grown from seed and infected with spinach downy mildew disease. Disease symptoms were evaluated in crossed and self- pollinated plants as a result of infected. İt was determined that the gene in the IG-101 variety, which provides resistance to the first 17 races of spinach downy mildew, is controlled by a single dominant gene. In this study, it was aimed to contribute to the development of resistant varieties to reduce economic losses and produce more environmentally friendly methods to control the disease.