Sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum, 2n = 4x = 48) is susceptible to downy mildew caused by Peronospora belbahrii. The Pb1 gene exhibits complete resistance to the disease. However, Pb1 became prone to disease because of occurrence of new virulent races. Here, we show that Zambian accession PI 500950 (Ocimum americanum var. pilosum) is highly resistant to the new races. From an interspecies backcross between PI 500950 and the susceptible 'Sweet basil' we obtained, by embryo rescue, a population of 131 BC1F1 plants. This population segregated 73 resistant (58) and susceptible (1:1; P = 0.22) plants, suggesting that resistance is controlled by one incompletely dominant gene called Pb2. To determine whether allelic relationship exists between Pb1 and Pb2, we used two differential races: race 0, which is avirulent to both PI 500945 (Pb1) and PI 500950 (Pb2), and race 1, which is virulent to PI 500945 but avirulent to PI 500950. F1 plants obtained from '12-4-6' (BC6F3 derived from PI 500945) and '56' (BC3F3 derived from PI 500950) showed resistant superiority to both races through dominant complementary interaction. F2 plants segregated to race 0 as follows: 12:3:1 (immune/incomplete resistant/susceptible) as opposed to 9:3:4 to race 1, indicating that Pb1 and Pb2 are not alleles. Because joint action is contributed in F1 plants and in advanced [BC3F3(56) × BC6F3(12-4-6) F4] populations that carry both genes, it can be assumed that both accessions carry two unlinked genes but share a common signal transduction pathway, which leads to dominant complementation superiority of the resistance against different races of basil downy mildew.
Keywords: allelic relationship; breeding; embryo rescue; genes for resistance; genetics; homoeologous chromosomes; interspecific hybridization; polyploidy; tetraploid basils.