§ Mrs. Ann WintertonTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what support her Department has given to(a) the development and (b) the dissemination of information on rhizomania-tolerant varieties of sugar beet. [23062]
§ Mr. MorleyDEFRA and the former Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food have spent over one million pounds on research into rhizomania. Much of this research has been into the biology of the organisms which cause and spread the disease, essential information for those developing tolerant varieties. Included in this work are projects more specifically related to the development of tolerant varieties including investigation of the biology and control of Plasmodiophoraceous virus vectors, an investigation of the significance of resistance-breaking Beet Necrotic Yellow Vein Virus (BNYVV) pathotypes for the UK sugar beet industry, and a project which seeks to identify new sources of rhizomania resistance. Additionally, DEFRA has supported the use of new tolerant varieties by accepting an industry request to allow their use on outbreak farms, in fields in which the disease has not been found. However, the development and dissemination of information on new varieties is the task of the seeds industry. Given the widespread findings of the disease in many European countries, where it is managed through the use of tolerant varieties, inevitably much of this development work has been done in those countries.