Improving key root traits in sugar beet: Fusarium tolerance

Fusarium oxysporum is an important and widespread soil-borne pathogen of sugar beet causing both root rots and wilting symptoms, alone or together. In this study, we evaluated the resistance to Fusarium oxysporum of a collection of sugar beet lines from CRA-CIN Rovigo’s genetic pool. Artificial inoculation was done with two fungal isolates from the US (Fob220a and F19). After six weeks, plants were scored for disease symptoms, including leaf stunting, chlorosis and necrosis, on the basis of a phenotypic resistance scale from 1 to 5. We identified lines, showing low and high levels of disease symptoms. These results were in agreement with field observations at two different study sites in the Ukraine where the same lines were classified as resistant and susceptible to root-rot under heavy infection pressure. Further genetic improvement studies at the molecular level based on the identification of SNP molecular markers associated with Fusarium resistance are underway.