Section Title
Mapping novel fusarium head blight (FHB) and stripe rust resistance genes from watkins landraces
Crop Types
- Wheat
Summary
Genetic resistance is the most sustainable way to effectively reduce FHB impacts. A very few well-characterized resistance sources (nearly resistant, for instance, AAC Tenacious) have been successfully developed but come in backgrounds with poor agronomic and quality traits, which make their large-scale adoption limited. It is mainly because the process of selection for FHB resistance sources and their introgression into elite wheat material is tedious due to the quantitative (oligogenic/polygenic) inheritance of resistance, which is significantly influenced by genotype-environment interactions. Moreover, plant morphological and developmental traits, for instance, plant height, awn character, spikelet density, flowering date, degree of floret opening during flowering, and grain filling rate also influence disease intensity (Bai et al. 2018). The contribution of these traits towards low or high FHB incidence could simply be passive (non-genetic) or have a genetic basis, for instance, pleiotropy or linkage drag (Rht locus and FHB resistance locus). Therefore, evaluating and building a correlation between the morphological/developmental traits with FHB traits are of paramount importance to understand the disease complex.
Key Takeaways
- Identification of novel, broad spectrum stripe rust resistance in spelt wheat can improve Canadian bread wheat cultivar’s resistance to stripe rust and increase yields during epidemic years. The identified adult-plant resistance in spelt wheat is novel.
- It is not always easy to transfer resistance genes from spelt wheat to bread wheat as experienced in this project.
- Stripe rust resistance in Watkin landraces Wat.1190308 and Wat.1190580 is controlled by a single major all-stage resistance gene Yr47.
- We have identified several minor effect QTL for FHB resistance in Watkin landrace Wat.1190580 and one of these QTL appears to be coinciding with plant height. Mapping FHB resistance in Watkin landraces is very challenging due to phenological differences in plant height, maturity, and anthesis.
- Pyramiding novel FHB resistance QTL with the existing resistance in Canadian wheat germplasm can help mitigate the adverse effects of FHB on Canadian wheat industry during epidemic years.















