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ARS Home » Plains Area » Manhattan, Kansas » Center for Grain and Animal Health Research » Hard Winter Wheat Genetics Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #328036
Title: Effective marker alleles associated with type II resistance of wheat to Fusarium head blight infection in fields

Author
item LUO, MENG - Yangzhou University
item ZHANG, DADONG - Kansas State University
item WU, DI - Yangzhou University
item LI, LEI - Yangzhou University
item Bai, Guihua

Submitted to: Journal of Breeding Science
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/13/2016
Publication Date: 5/16/2016
Publication URL: https://handle.nal.usda.gov/10113/5491314
Citation: Luo, M., Zhang, D., Wu, D., Li, L., Bai, G. 2016. Effective marker alleles associated with type II resistance of wheat to Fusarium head blight infection in fields. Journal of Breeding Science. doi: 10.1270/jsbbs.15124.

Interpretive Summary: Wheat Fusarium head blight (FHB) is an important disease of wheat. Use of DNA markers tightly linked to resistance genes can significantly improve the selection efficiency in breeding. We evaluated 192 wheat accessions for FHB in three field experiments, and genotyped them using 364 genome-wide informative simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. Among those markers, 11 showed significant effects on FHB severity. Mean FHB severities were negatively correlated with the number of favorable markers. Thus, selection for favorable markers should result in high levels of FHB resistance in breeding materials.

Technical Abstract: Molecular markers associated with known quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for type 2 resistance to Fusarium head blight (FHB) in bi-parental mapping populations usually have more than two alleles in breeding populations. Therefore, understanding the association of each allele with FHB response is particularly important to marker-assisted enhancement of FHB resistance. In this paper, we evaluated FHB severities of 192 wheat accessions including landraces and commercial varieties in three field growing seasons, and genotyped this panel with 364 genome-wide informative simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers. Among them, 11 markers showed reproducible marker-trait association (p<0.05) in at least two experiments using a mixed model. More than two alleles were identified per significant marker locus. These alleles were classified into favorable, unfavorable and neutral alleles according to their genetic effects. The distributions of effective alleles at these loci in each wheat accession were characterized. Mean FHB severities increased with decreased num-ber of favorable alleles at the reproducible loci. Chinese wheat landraces and Japanese accessions have more favorable alleles at the majority of the reproducible marker loci. FHB resistance levels of varieties can be greatly improved by introduction of these favorable alleles and removal of unfavorable alleles simultaneously at these QTL-linked marker loci.