Prospera

Prospera is the downy-mildew-resistant sweet basil line from Genesis Seeds in Israel's Negev desert, and the release most growers mean by the bare name is Prospera DMR (CG1), 'Cut Genovese 1', the flagship Genovese type. Genesis founder Dr. Isaac Nir set breeder Dr. Arnon Brand on the basil downy mildew problem around 2016; the resistance traces to an African basil source hybridised into a sweet Italian cultivar through an interspecific cross worked out with Prof. Yigal Cohen and Dr. Yariv Ben-Naim at Bar-Ilan University. The name is a pun on Peronospora, the genus of the pathogen, and prosperity. In University of Maryland field evaluations at three sites in 2019 it rated 0 for disease on all three assessment dates and never developed symptoms, matching 'Amazel' as top performer while 'Devotion' and 'Obsession' picked up mild symptoms. It is an F1 hybrid sold as certified organic seed, and it exists because an unprotected Genovese planting can be flattened by downy mildew in a wet summer.