Evaluation of Tolerance in Sugarbeet Varieties to Dodder

Dodder is an obligate parasite of many plant families and among dodder species Cuscuta campestris has the most diverse around the world. Extensive infestation to dodder recently has been reported in some sugerbeet production regions of Khorasan provinces. So, in this study greenhouse and field experiments were conducted to test and charachterize the tolerance of commercial sugarbeet varieties to C. campestris. A completely randomized design with five replications and a randomized complete block design with three replications were used for the greenhouse and field experiments, respectively. Treatments were five common varieties of sugarbeet included Castille, Paulina, Brigitta, Flores and Laetitia with dodder infestation and control treatments (sugarbeet varieties) without infestation. Traits measured were shoot and root dry weight of sugerbeet, dry weight of dodder, the number of houstorium on shoot of sugerbeet, growth percentage of dodder and sugerbeet. The results indicated that varieties showed different levels of tolerance to dodder infection. The variety of Flores had the most percentage of shoot and root dry weight and Paulina with 13.48% of root dry weight and 31.96% of shoot dry weight compared to control showed the least tolerance. Whereas the number of houstorium and dodder dry weight had the most and the least amount in Castille and Flores, respectively. In this experiment Flores variety exhibited tolerance to dodder and Castille was known as susceptible variety