美国开发出自身抗害虫菠菜新品种

• http://www.aweb.com.cn 2007年11月20日09:23 美国农业部网

　　美国农业部网10月9日消息，美国农业研究局的植物遗传学家目前开发出世界上首例自身抗害虫的菠菜品种“03-04-09”和“03-04-63”。菠菜是潜叶蝇繁殖生存的首选植物，雌性果蝇把卵产在菠菜叶的上部和下部层之间，幼虫在叶子中孵化长大，使得菠菜大面积受害。这种植物天然抗害虫方式经济、有效和环保，深受农业种植者的青睐。（国际情报研究室译）

　　【原文】

　　Spinach Gets New Protection Against Pesky Leafminers 

　　By Marcia Wood

　　October 9, 2007 

　　Spinach and lettuce—favorite greens of many salad lovers—are also top choices of troublesome insects known as leafminers. That's why California-based plant geneticist Beiquan Mou of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) has developed two kinds of parent spinach plants with impressive natural resistance to the insects. 

　　Natural resistance offers an economical, effective and environmentally friendly way to battle leafminers, according to Mou. He's with the ARS Crop Improvement and Protection Research Unit, Salinas, Calif. The Salinas Valley is world-famous for the top-quality leafy greens grown there.

　　New, leafminer-resistant lettuces are in the works, Mou noted.

　　Adult leafminers—shiny black flies about one-tenth-inch long—sport a bright-yellow triangle on their backs. They can ruin spinach, lettuce and other greens when they puncture leaves to feed on the sap, creating unsightly holes called "stings."

　　Female flies cause additional damage by inserting their eggs between the upper and lower layers of a spinach leaf, for instance. The hungry, wormlike larvae that hatch from the tiny white eggs feed voraciously on the leaves. Their munching creates winding, whitish tunnels, the signature "mines" for which leafminers are named.

　　Though the new plants aren't resistant to the stings of the flying adult leafminers, they have many fewer mines than the other kinds of spinach that Mou's team tested.

　　The new spinach plants, designated "03-04-09" and "03-04-63," rate as the world's first spinach breeding lines with significant leafminer resistance. Mou has been making seeds of the plants available to other researchers and plant breeders worldwide since late 2006. 

　　These parent plants serve as an invaluable source of resistance that can be bred into spinach types already popular with growers, home gardeners and shoppers.