News Release

MADISON, WI, JUNE 21, 2011 -- Fusarium Head Blight is a devastating fungal disease of wheat that affects grain yield and grain quality throughout the world. In addition to shriveling wheat grains, this blight also produces a fungal toxin. Breeding wheat for resistance to this blight reduces damage and toxin levels in wheat.

Resistance to Fusarium Head Blight in wheat is controlled by strands of DNA linked to genes that cause specific traits. These are present in an exotic Chinese wheat cultivar not adapted to the U.S. mid-Atlantic region, where soft red winter wheat is grown.

A team of scientists at the University of Maryland, University of Kentucky, North Carolina State, Virginia Tech, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture led by José Costa introduced three Fusarium Head Blight resistant lines from the Chinese cultivar into the adapted red winter wheat cultivar McCormick.

Eight wheat lines with different combinations of traits were developed and tracked using molecular markers. These wheat lines were tested for blight resistance over two years in four environments, including one greenhouse and three field evaluations.

According to Costa, a wheat line that combined two specific traits expressed the highest resistance and lowest toxin content across all four environments. These results indicated that the combination of these two genes would be most effective in breeding for improved blight resistance in soft red winter wheat in the mid-Atlantic region.

Results from the study were published in the 2011 May-June issue of the journalCrop Science. This study was funded by the USDA, the U.S. Wheat and Barley Scab Initiative, the Maryland Crop Improvement Association, and the Maryland Grain Producers Utilization Board. 

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