Plant Breeding. 2020;139:251-262. | 251 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pbr | INTRODUC TI ONFusarium species cause diseases, reduce yield and produce several mycotoxins in all cereal crops, for example stalk and ear rots in maize and Fusarium head blight (FHB) or scab in small-grain cereals such as rye, triticale, durum wheat and bread wheat. These cereals provide 72% of the total small-grain production in the European Union with 7.4, 11.7, 8.8 and 141.5 million tons harvested in 2017, respectively (FAO, 2019). Modern hexaploid triticale is a cross between tetraploid durum wheat (2n = 28 = AABB, seed parent) and diploid rye (2n = 14 = RR, pollen parent; Ammar, Mergoum, & Rajaram, 2004). Fusarium culmorum is one of the major Fusarium species in Europe causing FHB among small-grain cereals and contaminating the grain with deoxynivalenol (DON) or nivalenol and zearalenone Abstract Small-grain winter cereal crops can be infected with Fusarium head blight (FHB) leading to mycotoxin contamination and reduction in grain weight and quality. Although a number of studies have investigated the genetic variation of genotypes within each small-grain cereal, a systematic comparison of the winter crops rye, triticale, durum and bread wheat for their FHB resistance, Fusarium-damaged kernels (FDK) and deoxynivalenol (DON) contamination across species is still missing. We have therefore evaluated twelve genotypes each of four crops widely varying in their FHB resistance under artificial infection with one DON-producing F. culmorum isolate at constant spore concentrations and additionally at crop-specific concentrations in two environments. Rye and triticale were the most resistant crops to FHB followed by bread and durum wheat at constant and crop-specific spore concentrations. On average, rye accumulated the lowest amount of DON (10.08 mg/kg) in the grains, followed by triticale (15.18 mg/kg) and bread wheat (16.59 mg/kg), while durum wheat had the highest amount (30.68 mg/kg). Genotypic variances within crops were significant (p ≤ .001) in most instances. These results underline the differing importance of breeding for FHB resistance in the different crops. K E Y W O R D S deoxynivalenol concentration, Fusarium culmorum, Fusarium head blight resistance, smallgrain cereals S U PP O RTI N G I N FO R M ATI O N Additional supporting information may be found online in the Supporting Information section. How to cite this article: Gaikpa DS, Lieberherr B, Maurer HP, Longin CFH, Miedaner T. Comparison of rye, triticale, durum wheat and bread wheat genotypes for Fusarium head blight resistance and deoxynivalenol contamination. Plant Breed.

Resistances to Septoria tritici blotch (STB) and Fusarium head blight (FHB) are important goals in European wheat breeding. We tested 25 winter wheat cultivars differing in their resistance to both diseases by inoculating Zymoseptoria tritici or Fusarium culmorum either separately on different plots or combined on the same plot. Experiments were carried out across three location 9 year combinations in four variants: noninoculated, STB inoculated, FHB inoculated and STB+FHB inoculated at the respective optimal plant stages. On the individually inoculated plots, mean STB severities ranged from 12% to 70% and mean FHB severities from 0.3% to 67% across wheat cultivars. The resistances to STB and FHB were not correlated. Mean disease severities of the respective inoculation variants, STB vs. STB+FHB and FHB vs. STB+FHB, were not significantly different (P > 0.1), and correlations between both inoculation variants were extremely high (r = 0.98) for STB. In conclusion, breeding populations have to be selected for both resistances separately, but phenotyping can be performed on the same plot without ranking differences of the respective resistance.

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