Inheritance of resistance to powdery mildew (oidium lycopersicum) and its linkage to an SSR marker in tomato hybrid DRW4409

Abstract

Powdery mildew is a serious disease for greenhouse and field tomatoes in North America. The main objective of this experiment was to study the genetic inheritance of resistance to powdery mildew in tomato hybrid DRW4409 and to identify simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers linked to the resistance gene. Analysis of a genetic population derived from DRW4409 showed that resistance to powdery mildew is controlled by a single dominant gene. Screening 158 SSR loci found that the SSR marker, LEat014, is linked to this gene at a map distance of 8.0 cM. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of an SSR linked to the resistance gene in DRW4409. Because of its co-dominant nature, this SSR should be useful to breeders in screening tomato plants for resistance to powdery mildew when DRW4409 is used as the resistance gene source.