Genetic Dissection and Improvement of Fusarium Head Blight Resistance in Durum Wheat
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Abstract
Fusarium Head Blight (FHB) is a destructive and complex fungal disease in wheat. Durum wheat, an economically important crop for pasta production, is under the severe impact of FHB. While numerous favorable QTL/genes have been identified in common wheat, there are fewer resistance resources found in durum wheat. An interspecific cross between FHB resistant hard red spring wheat (HRSW) and durum wheat cultivar ‘Riveland’ has been conducted for the introgression of resistance resources to durum wheat. Given the complex quantitative trait of FHB resistance in wheat, a recurrent selection population was constructed by crossing durum wheat cultivars and durum breeding lines deviated from resistant tetraploid wheat and common wheat. Several FHB resistant breeding lines with lower FHB severity, lower plant height, and shorter flowering date than ‘Riveland’ were obtained from interspecies crosses and recurrent selection populations. These breeding lines can be used for the development of new durum wheat cultivars with high resistance to FHB. To explore the implementation of genome-wide markers to screen FHB resistance in the durum wheat breeding program, a genomic prediction model was built using breeding lines from 2012-2018 advanced yield trials (AYT) evaluated in multiple environments of scab nurseries. The genomic prediction accuracies were 0.53 and 0.47, respectively, based on ten-fold cross-validation and forward prediction to untested breeding lines. The results indicated that genomic selection could enhance FHB resistance improvement in the durum wheat breeding program.