2019 ASHS Annual Conference

Spinach (Spinacia oleracea) production in the US has grown steadily during the past years, however production must thrive in a dynamic environment constantly challenged by abiotic and biotic stresses. Such stresses have a profound effect on quality and yield. Therefore, the current challenge in spinach production is to increase productivity by improving resistance and tolerance to diseases and environmental stresses. Due to the dioecious nature of spinach, breeding efficiency is very low using conventional methods. One of the major constraints to implement modern molecular breeding approaches used to be the lack of a good linkage maps and the lack of high-density molecular markers. But, with the advancements in next-generation sequencing for genotyping and the availability of a reference genome, it is now possible to identify markers associated to traits of interest. However, in order to precisely link these markers to traits of interest, it is required to phenotype large and diverse populations. Traditionally, phenotyping has been performed by manual measurements at single time points. The task is very time consuming and results in high variability due to human error. This report describes Texas A&M AgriLife Spinach breeding program efforts to develop molecular and phenotyping tools to improve breeding selection efficiency for cultivar development. Tools include development of high throughput phenotyping methodology using unmanned aircraft vehicles to monitor crop growth throughout the season and the development of molecular markers associated with plant growth, disease resistance, and abiotic stress.