Scientists have published the paper on associated study of adult plant resistance to spot blotch, caused by Bipolaris sorokiniana, in an elite Canadian two-row barley germplasm collection. This devastating disease causes significant reduction of quality of grains of barley and thereby declining profits of barley growers. Enhanced resistance to this disease is a major goal of western Canadian two-row barley breeding programmes; however, two-row barley is considered to be more susceptible than six-row barley. Plant–pathogen interactions observed for Canadian germplasm are polygenic, where quantitative breeding methods could be beneficial for the development of resistant germplasm. A germplasm panel consisting of 200 two-row, spring barley genotypes with differential reaction to spot blotch was evaluated at Brandon, Manitoba (MB), and Melfort, Saskatchewan (SK), over eight site years. Genome-wide association study was conducted using a 50k single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) Illumina iSelect genotyping array. The most-resistant germplasm was found to carry Midwest Six-rowed Durable Resistant Haplotype (MSDRH) alleles at the loci located on chromosomes 1H (Rcs-qtl-1H-11_10764), 3H (Rcs-qtl-3H-11_10565) and 7H (Rcs-qtl-7H-11_20162, Rcs5 locus), where the 3H locus was found to be the most under-represented in Canadian germplasm. Additional marker-trait associations within nurseries were identified on chromosomes 1H, 2H and 4H. Several of the SNP markers identified were found to be polymorphic within the Canadian two-row germplasm panel and thus could be useful for enhancing spot blotch resistance in two-row barley for development of resistant cultivars.
Source: Tucker, J.R., Badea, A., Fernando, W.G.D., Hiebert, C.W., Woitas, A.C. & Beattie A.D. (2024) Genome-wide association study of adult plant resistance to spot blotch in an elite Canadian two-row barley germplasm collection. Plant Pathology, 00, 1–12. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/ppa.13896
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