Inoculation and Growth with Root Parasitic Weeds

A number of parasitic plants have become weeds, posing severe constraints to major crops including grain legumes. Breeding for resistance is acknowledged as the major component of an integrated control strategy. However, resistance against most parasitic weeds is difficult to access, scarce, of complex nature and of low heritability, making breeding for resistance a difficult task. Only moderate to low levels of incomplete resistance of complex inheritance has been identified against most Orobanche species. This has made selection more difficult and has slowed down the breeding process. Resistance is a multicomponent event, being the result of a battery of escape factors or resistance mechanisms acting at different levels of the infection process. Understanding these mechanisms will help to detect existing genetic diversity for mechanisms that hamper infection. The use of Medicago truncatula as a model to study the resistance and pathogenesis of parasitic weeds will allow a better knowledge of those mechanisms. Inoculation and growth with root parasitic weeds Page 1 of 11 Medicago truncatula handbook version 20 April 2007