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Russian wheat aphid on barley
leaf. Click the image for more information about it.
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New Offerings Target Aphid's Grip on Barley
By Luis
Pons March 19, 2007
Two new varieties—and 50 new germplasm lines—of barley that
resist all known types of Russian wheat aphid (RWA) now affecting the western
Great Plains have been released by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and their collaborators.
This is great news for the region's barley industry, which, for two
decades, has been stymied by the invasive pest.
The new offerings resist damage from the original RWA that began
devastating Plains barley in 1986, as well as from five new races of the pest
found since 2003. The aphid has halted barley production in parts of eastern
Colorado and Wyoming, and in parts of western Nebraska and Kansas.
The releases are a payoff from a 12-year project in which plant
geneticist
Dolores
Mornhinweg in the
ARS
Wheat, Peanut and Other Field Crops Research Unit at Stillwater, Okla.,
teamed with geneticists
Phil
Bregitzer and
Donald
Obert in the
ARS
Small Grains and Potato Germplasm Research Unit at Aberdeen, Idaho. Their
objective is to introduce RWA-resistant genes to every commercial barley type
grown in the United States.
The new varieties—named Sidney and Stoneham—are
drought-hardy spring feed barleys. They were developed through crossing of
RWA-resistant barley material with Otis, a feed variety that was bred for
drought-susceptible eastern Colorado but has been decimated by the RWA. They
are the result of collaborative work between ARS,
Colorado State University and the
University of Nebraska.
Also released were 36 spring germplasm lines of malting barley, and 14
germplasm lines of feed barley—seven each for spring and winter planting.
Since the main feature of the new barley releases is tolerance, aphids
can be present on the plants without damaging them, according to
Mornhinweg.
She has screened the entire collection of barley accessions at
Aberdeen's National
Small Grains Collection, identifying 109 samples with some level of RWA
resistance. According to Mornhinweg, the new releases involve 37 sources of RWA
resistance found during this screening.
ARS is the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's chief scientific research agency.
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