Who says California growers should lay sole claim to America's new love affair with spinach? Certainly not Texas And Arkansas producers who are out to reclaim their presence in a market valued at more than $50 million.

Until the 1950s, Texas was a spinach mecca, with some 44,000 acres of both fresh and processing spinach. In fact, the center of the Wintergarden production region, Crystal City, boasts a monument to the legendary spinach-guzzler, Popeye.

But decades of disease problems and antiquated postharvest handling techniques have reduced Texas acreage nearly 80%. The state now produces about 2,700 acres for fresh market and 7,500 acres for processing. Its neighbor to the east, Arkansas, has exited the fresh market completely, but still claims about 2000 to 4000 acres for processing.

"We basically ship spinach out of Texas the same way we did in the '40s," explains Frank Dainello, Texas A&M University professor and extension specialist. Unfortunately, due to a high respiration rate, spinach is highly perishable, and the grade-out is considerable by the time the crop reaches the packer. "Consequently, we're just not putting a quality product on the marketplace. It's a quality product in the field, but we're just not geared up to handle it," admits Dainello.

BANDING TOGETHER
Texas growers have watched the startling rise of California's "baby leaf" spinach industry with a touch of envy. They've seen California growers meet consumers' preferences for an attractive, bagged product so successfully that the state now commands 70% of the country's fresh spinach market with some 12,000 acres in production.

The need for a concerted effort to save the spinach industry in Texas really came to a head about four years ago when growers faced major weed problems and called upon Texas A&M to assist in securing a Section 18 for Dual herbicide. Dainello says he agreed to help, but drove home the need for ongoing grower funding for spinach research.

Nearly 60 growers banded together to form the Texas Wintergarden Spinach Producers Association, whose goal is to first fund production research, and then fund promotional efforts for the state's spinach. Third-generation grower Ed Ritchie serves as its president.

Ritchie explains that the Board collects check-off funds from growers on a per-bushel basis for fresh market product and a per-ton cost for processing spinach. So far, the program has raised nearly $105,000 through assessments and contributions (about $30,000 annually) for work at Texas A&M University and The University of Arkansas. The two institutions have signed a cooperative spinach research agreement, and university officials there have even agreed to kick in some of their funds for the work.

BUILDING A BETTER SPINACH
The first priority of the research is to address "the disease that essentially wrecked us: white rust," says Dainello. "Because spinach is such a minor crop, we're losing chemicals all the time, so we need new crop-protection products," says Ritchie. Dainello is testing various chemistries, including some of the new-generation fungicides. He is trialing both Quadris (azoxystrobin, Zeneca) and Acti-Guard (CGA-245704, Novartis) and says they both look good, though neither is currently labeled for spinach in Texas.

Researchers are also addressing variety development. In fact, The University of Arkansas runs the only public spinach breeding program left in the country. Its efforts, led by Teddy Morelock, have been fruitful. Arkansas has released a number of cultivars with resistance to white rust. The program has even identified a strain that possesses some aphid resistance.

Ritchie has been thrilled with the breeding results thus far. He reports few problems with white rust in his spinach over the last four to five years, thanks to the Arkansas variety Fall Green and the Alf Christianson variety Samish, which contains Arkansas genetics. He's also trialed Morelock's newest introduction, AR310, and believes it "shows promise."

POSTHARVEST DEFICIENCIES
But disease resistance won't solve Texas' postharvest problems, and many growers don't have enough spinach acreage to justify the cost for high-tech packing sheds. Ritchie also believes research will have to come up with a new type of packaging material that can preserve this highly perishable crop. It's another project on the universities' to-do lists.

• Courting the Customer
  Down the road, check-off funding will be aimed at marketing Texas spinach to U.S. consumers. Dainello and the Board are not short on ideas:
  
• Create a brand.
  The group would like to develop a trademark for the Wintergarden region spinach, much as the Vidalia onion growers have. The Texas Department of Agriculture has already expressed an interest in promoting the concept, once it's developed.
  
• Create a new mix.
  Dainello says the group wants to do something different than the premium "yuppie" salad mixes coming out of California. "We want to come up with something more Southern, maybe take spinach, some of our mustards, and some onion tops to create a spice flavor," he explains. Getting the mixes into grocery stores will pose a challenge, he admits, as Texas producers don't have the extensive buyer connections that huge California vegetable growers have developed.
  
• Tout the nutrition.
  Nutritionally, spinach is head and shoulders above many lettuces on the market today, particularly iceberg, which Dainello calls "a green container for water." Morelock says breeding efforts could even tweak nutrient levels in spinach, which already possesses high levels of vitamin A, lutein (an antioxidant), and folic acid. Morelock also has items in his test plots with varied flavors and shapes that could be tapped into. For instance, one spinach variety has a fuller habit and could be coaxed into a head, to compete with the butterhead and premium lettuces.
  
• Year-round presence.
  Texas' spinach season runs from late November into mid-March. By teaming with Arkansas and other states, such as Arizona and Colorado, growers can come close to making the tasty savoys available to stores all year.