Objective:
Project #1: The overall goal of this project is to develop malting barley varieties with enhanced resistance to FHB and lower concentration of the mycotoxin deoxynivalenol (DON). Project #2: To enhance our understanding of resistance to Fusarium head blight (FHB) in barley and develop molecular marker tools to exploit resistance genes from diverse sources of resistance.

Approach:
Project #1: We propose a comprehensive FHB breeding effort utilizing greenhouse for crossing and single-seed advance, extensive field trials for FHB evaluation, off-season nurseries for additional FHB evaluation and rapid generation advance and seed increases, and collaborative regional nurseries to evaluate elite breeding lines. Specifically: 1) Develop breeding populations segregating for FHB resistance; 2) Evaluate early generation (F5), preliminary, intermediate, and advanced breeding lines in replicated field disease nurseries. Field disease trials will be conducted at three locations in Minnesota and in an off-season nursery in Hangzhou, China. Project #2: We will generate a high resolution map of the QTL regions that will be useful for MAS and future map-based cloning efforts. We have initiated research to use association genetics in breeding germplasm to identify novel FHB QTL. This research will leverage resources developed by the USDA-CSREES Barley CAP. In this funding period, we will conduct association mapping using a set of 384 breeding lines from four breeding programs evaluated for FHB at 4-5 locations in 2008. We will also continue to collect FHB and DON data from an additional set of 384 lines in 2009.