Assessment of a glasshouse test for measuring the resistance of potato cultivars to common scab

Resistance to common scab was assessed on 19 cultivars in a glasshouse in pots containing naturally-infested sandy soil, diluted or not with river sand. Disease assessments by directly scoring the produce of the pots on a 1–9 scale of increasing resistance was as satisfactory as calculating the percentage of infected tubers after estimating the amount of common scab on each tuber. Tubers from plants growing in sandy soil diluted to 50%, as described, gave a wider variation in scab score between cultivars and a reduced error variance compared with undiluted sand. The data from the 50% mixture also correlated more closely with scab resistance scores provided by other sources. It is calculated that the use of 12 replicate plants would permit the detection of a difference in mean resistance of 1.3 points on a 9-point scale.