b"POPEYE WAS RIGHT!CREATING VARIETIES IN ONE OF THE MOST NUTRITIOUS VEGETABLESBY: MARCEL BRUINSH e was right, Popeye! He knew all along that spinach is one of the most nutritious vegetables consumed world-wide with lots of health benefits. The crop is an excel-lent source of crucial minerals, vitamins, plant proteins, fibres and omega 3's. Apart from this, scientific studies show that in humans, spinach is known to boost immune levels, aid in skin care, regulate blood pressure and lots more.To learn more about what it takes to develop new spinach varieties, European Seed spoke with spinach breeders of seven of the major spinach breeding companies in the world.TOP BREEDING TARGETSWe are dedicated to breeding for qualities that are important to our customers and for consumers. In our spinach program, our pathology teams pay special attention to downy mildew (DM) resistances and leaf spots, says Ben Hunter, Global Spinach Collaborative Breeding Pipeline Team Lead at Bayer Crop Science. He adds they also focus on yield and leaf quality includ-ing leaf count and leaf thickness as well as bolting resistance that results in robust varieties for their processing customers. For baby leaf products they perform a strong selection on leaf shape, colour and savoy structure.Phillip Simons, spinach breeder at BASF Vegetables, remarks that BASF tries to combine full resistance against downy mildew with high yield and good cultural value. They con-sider traits like leaf colour, leaf texture, savoy, plant erectness and cup are very important. Tolerance for bolting is needed for summer varieties in countries with long day lengths. By testing our varieties in different regions and seasons we select for the most stable ones, he explains.Syngentas Spinach Breeder, Rinse Jaarsma, largely con-curs by mentioning that their major breeding goals are disease resistance; type (leaf shape, colour); bolting and flowering for seed production and, last but not least, leaf yield.Our focus is on baby leaf, mainly for the market on the west coast of U.S., with spin off to several other markets in the world, says Raimon Laan, Spinach Breeder at Bejo Zaden. HeDisease scoring in spinach.clarifies that, by far the most important breeding goal is resist-ance against downy mildew (Peronospora effusa). Presently there are 19 denominated strains of this disease and everyeases some of them are also soil borne. Poor rotation prac-season or year there is a possibility of new breaking isolates.tices in our key markets makes it important to breed for It is always a puzzle to combine the resistance patterns of dif- resistance but we also think it is important to influence ferent parent lines to a new hybrid. Besides that, colour (dark,growers to improve rotation practices because disease but not too dark), equal and upright growth and texture areresistance cannot solve all problems especially with important. Semi- and a quarter savoy is preferred at the moment.almost zero fungicides available.It gives volume in the bag and the leaves do not stick together,2. Visual appearance (leaf shape, leaf colour, shiny leaves, he explains. semi savoy leaves for baby leaf while more smooth leaves Managing Director of DeSeed Denmark A/S, Ole Johansen,for bunching/industry, upright leaves with the right leaf lists four major breeding goals for his company:to petiole ratio).1.Disease resistancedowny mildew, white rust,3. High growth speed for cold late autumn/winter segments Stemphylium, Fusarium, Pythium all are fungal dis- and slow growth speed for summer segments (slow grow-12IEUROPEAN SEEDIEUROPEAN-SEED.COM"