| | ARS | Publication request: Objectives of Sugar Beet Breeding - Resistance to the Curly Top Virus (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-22) |
 | | Although host plant resistance to BCTV was observed in the early 1900s, breeding programs were not initiated until 15 years later. |
 | | Technical Abstract: Beet curly top virus (BCTV) is a gemini virus transmitted by the beet leafhopper, Circulifer tenellus (Baker), that attacks sugar beet throughout the semi-arid areas in the western United States, south-western Canada, Mexico, the Mediterranean basin, Turkey and Iran. |
 | | Although twenty years of mass selection had been successful in producing resistant open-pollinated populations, with the advent of hybrid varieties it was realized that inbreeding and progeny testing was necessary to continue to improve the varieties and convert open-pollinated varieties to monogerm, O-type parents. |
| www.ars.usda.gov /research/publications/publications.htm?seq_no_115=160218 (783 words) |