Orobanche cumana Wallr. is an important new problem for sunflower crop in Tunisia. Little information is available on the behavior of sunflower to O. cumana infestation in this region. Research activities are focusing on screening some sunflower accessions in order to identify resistant ones and to develop other cultural and biological methods to use them in integrated way to reduce the impact of this parasite. For this purpose, field natural infestation and artificial inoculation in pots and Petri dishes evaluations were conducted using eleven sunflower accessions out of them 4 introduced lines were known by their resistance to O. cumana used as reference. In infested field, three of the reference lines (TL12, TL15 and TL16) did not show any emerged broomrape shoot and the values of their major agro-morphological parameters were not affected by parasitism. Results of pots and Petri dishes experiments confirmed the field testing. In the resistant lines, the stems dry weight, the number and weight of sunflower seeds were not significantly reduced under infestation contrarily to the others accessions. The resistance of these lines is characterized by reduced germination percentage of Orobanche seeds and low attachments/tubercles number of the parasite. O. cumana infection do not influence seed oil content in resistant lines contrarily to susceptible accessions. Nevertheless, no relationship was found between fatty acids composition and resistance to broomrape infestation. These results would be useful for improving resistance of sunflower against broomrape.‎

Orobanche cumana Wallr。是突尼斯向日葵作物的一个重要的新问题。关于该地区向日葵对O. cumana侵染的行为的信息很少。研究活动的重点是筛选一些向日葵种质，以鉴定抗性种质，并开发其他文化和生物学方法以综合方式使用它们，以减少这种寄生虫的影响。为此，使用11种向日葵种进行了盆栽和培养皿中田间自然侵染和人工接种的评估，其中4种引入品系因其对黄瓜的抗性而闻名。用作参考。在受侵染的田间，参考线中的三个（TL12，TL15和TL16）没有显示出出现的扫帚枝，并且其主要农业形态学参数的值不受寄生虫的影响。盆和培养皿实验的结果证实了现场测试。在抗性系中，与其他种质相反，在侵染下茎干重，向日葵种子的数量和重量没有显着降低。这些系的抗性的特征在于Orobanche种子的发芽百分比降低，并且寄生虫的附着/结节数低。黄瓜与易感种质相反，感染不会影响抗性品系中的种子油含量。然而，在脂肪酸组成和对扫帚的侵染的抵抗力之间未发现任何关系。这些结果将有助于提高向日葵对扫帚的抵抗力。