Resistant Germplasm for Late Blight Management
A European Union project (BlightMOP) investigating organic LB management strategies reported that the most promising strategy is to grow LB resistant potato clones. Most EU LB resistant clones are not available in the US. Ospud identified 3 commercially available LB resistant cultivars in the US: Island Sunshine (IS), Jacqueline Lee (JL), and Defender. These were grown in non-replicated trials on 5 cooperating farms in 2006. Defender was highly resistant to foliar LB and IS and JL were somewhat to moderately resistant in on-farm and research station trials in 2006. In general, the farmers who trialed the three cultivars considered them to be viable alternatives to the russet and yellow-fleshed cultivars they were currently producing and 7 farmers intend to evaluate them in on-farm trials in 2007.
The OSU Potato Breeding Program (Isabel Vales and Solomon Yilma) cooperated with Ospud to evaluate potato clones for LB resistance in research station field trials. The results of this research will be reported here soon.