Improvement of fusarium head blight resistance in winter wheat

Citation

Kang-Choi M, Humphreys G, Cloutier S, Blackwell B, McCartney C, Navabi A (2016) Improvement of fusarium head blight resistance in winter wheat. Proc 3rd Can Wheat Symposium, Ottawa, Nov22-25, P 35

Résumé

Fusarium head blight (FHB) is a destructive disease of cereal crops such as wheat and barley. FHB is particularly prevalent in areas where warm temperatures and high relative humidity at flowering exist (e.g. eastern Canada). AC Morley, an eastern Canadian hard red winter wheat variety, is known for its high grain yield combined with high protein content, good winter hardiness and moderate resistance to FHB. Emerson, a western Canadian hard red winter wheat variety, has high grain yield, a resistant rating to FHB and superior milling quality. Although these two cultivars have been widely used in breeding for improved FHB resistance, the genetic nature of their FHB resistance is not well understood. In order to characterize FHB resistance in these two varieties, this study has the following objectives: i) to develop a doubled haploid (DH) population from the cross AC Morley x Emerson, ii) to genotype the DH population using single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers, iii) to phenotype the DH population for FHB resistance including deoxynivalenol (DON) levels and iv) to develop a high-density map to identify quantitative trait loci (QTL) for FHB resistance. For this study, phenotyping of the DH population will be conducted at three different locations: AAFC-Ottawa and University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada and Yangzhou University in China. Genotyping will be conducted using the 90K Illumina Infinium assay at AAFC-Morden, Manitoba.