Clever people, those plant breeder chappies. They somehow manage to take a down-to-earth crop like spinach, find one of those gene ‘thingys’ from somewhere else and persuade it to climb into the vegetable. Then, Bob’s your uncle, downy mildew is almost a thing of the past.

At Hazeldene, we are pretty impressed by such things. Our baby spinach is grown at such high density in Lancashire that just a sniff of downy mildew in the crop and the whole lot can fall victim to the disease in a matter of hours.

Traditionally, we would have sprayed the crop frequently just to try to stay on top of it, but over the last few years, our friends at Tozer have become masters at persuading the gene ‘thingys’ to climb in and make the spinach resistant.

As it is so important to find alternatives to pesticides, we decided to visit Tozer to find out how it was done and to see if fungicide application can be consigned to history.

The first question is, of course, is this a GM thing? “Absolutely not” is the firm answer from Alec Roberts of Tozer. “It is a product of old-fashioned varietal breeding from our colleagues at Pop Vriend over in the Netherlands,” he told me.

But, as Roberts points out, it is an ongoing process. It is a battle between downy mildew, which mutates all too frequently into another race, and the spinach breeders who must stay one step ahead of the mildew, ensuring that the right genes are bred into the current varieties.

This is a key learning experience for all of us who grow and handle spinach. There is huge concern at the rate at which the resistance genes are being overcome by the disease. Resistance in a crop such as spinach is a very precious commodity. We must do our very best to protect this natural asset and provide as much balanced protection as possible to delay the breaking of the resistance by the downy mildew.

One of the critical goals is to protect the cotyledons of the spinach. While the main leaves carry the resistance to mildew, the cotyledons can be highly susceptible. If the disease infects these cotyledons, it can put so much pressure on the crop that the chance of the resistant race developing is much greater.

To prevent this, a balanced approach in applying an appropriate seed dressing to a resistant variety is critically important to protect our resistant genes for longer.

This year has seen one of these breaks in resistance and so all our spinach growers are urged to ensure they change varieties as swiftly as possible to counter the new threat from Race 11 downy mildew.

At Hazeldene, we are keen to include resistance in our ongoing development of varieties. Our variety trials this year in Lancashire have already highlighted clear instances of disease resistance and susceptibility, allowing us to plan varietal development accordingly.

We believe that resistance in our varieties is a key attribute that we need to build into our cropping programmes but, at the same time, it is clear that we have to manage the crop protection balance to ensure we protect our natural advantage.

It’s all about the balance.