Environmental impact on downy mildew infection for different pea varieties

Summary In general, varieties of any cultivated species can differ in many aspects. One of the desirable traits in breeding new varieties is high yield, which can be significantly reduced by plant diseases. This study is an extension of previous research about the resistance of seed pea lines to downy mildew, and provides an extended analysis of this type of experiment. The probability of a degree of infection is determined based on a logistic model with a multinomial distribution. In the analysis the impact of a fixed effect of variety and random environmental effects is considered. It is shown that the environmental effects (combinations of years and location – macro-environments) significantly influence the resistance to diseases, and the differences among environments are larger than the variability of differences among genotypes over all environments. For two types of soils (light and rich) the most resistant varieties, which are significantly different from the control variety, are indicated.