Evaluation of spring barley genotypes with different susceptibility to Fusarium head blight using molecular markers

Abstract

485Fusarium head blight (FHB) is a worldwide distributed cereal disease that is caused by fungi of the Fusarium genus. Infection of plants can result in yield reduction and accumulation of toxic secondary fungal metabolites, mycotoxins in kernels (Windels 2000, Takeda 2004). The number of papers dealing with FHB on barley is generally much lower than that of research studies on wheat. It is due to a much greater economic importance of wheat as a cereal crop, but as well as to the fact that FHB causes larger economic losses in wheat than in barley. Though the two crops are attacked by identical FHB pathogens, there are differences in their infection responses. In general, barley is less susceptible to FHB than wheat. Grain yield is affected by FHB more in wheat than in barley, however a higher mycotoxin concentration is observed in the latter due to outer cover layers (lemma and palea) that are parts of the kernel from harvest to end use (Steffenson 2003). Produced toxins are harmful to human health and can induce serious diseases. The mycotoxins are deactivated neither in malting nor in brewing processes. Moreover, they can influence beer flavour and cause gushEvaluation of spring barley genotypes with different susceptibility to Fusarium head blight using molecular markers ABSTRACTOne of cereal diseases that has gained a greater importance for growers, processing industry as well as for breeders in many regions of the world is Fusarium head blight (FHB) caused by fungi of the Fusarium genus. The objectives of this study were to test diversity among spring barley breeding lines exhibiting various sensitivity to FHB and to find RAPD markers and AFLP markers that will distinguish between susceptible and resistant and/or moderately resistant genotypes. A test of a set of spring barley genotypes artificially infected by fusaria in field trials was carried out. Based on the results from field and laboratory evaluation and deoxynivalenol (DON) content assessment, barley genotypes with different responses to FHB were selected. The genotypes were hybridized and doubled haploid (DH) lines were derived in F 1 generation using the in vitro androgenesis method. Initial parental components and derived DH lines were tested for FHB infection and DON content. A set of parental genotypes of spring barley was tested with 80 RAPD markers. A RAPD marker (H30) was detected which enabled to distinguish between very susceptible parental genotypes and other resistant or moderately resistant spring barley genotypes based on the fragment of about 1300 bp. This specific product was screened in 23 DH lines derived from crosses of parental genotypes of spring barley and detected in 10 DH lines. During the study, some DH lines were selected that exhibited improved resistance to Fusarium infection. A low infection level and low DON content was found in the line DH 4/2 derived from CI 4196 × Foster. The AFLP technique was used to analyse parental genotypes of spring barley. The detected markers can be further evaluated and employed to select ...

Resistance to Fusarium head blight in spring barley

“…In barley, the assessment of a disease according to symptoms and other measurements is even more complicated than in wheat. Insignificant correlations were found out by Nesvadba et al (2006) between ear infection percentage and DON content and also between the percentage of fusaria in a laboratory test and DON content. By contrast, other authors (Urrea et al 2002;Buerstmayr The objective of this paper was to present results of artificially inoculated field experiments in which 44 spring barley cultivars were examined over two years for the accumulation of the mycotoxin DON in grain and the important FHB severity traits to investigate genetic variation in these traits and to identify possible new sources for resistance breeding.…”

The ‘how to’ on incentivising farmers to adapt Fusarium mycotoxin management of wheat

“…(Bérubé et al 2012;Salas et al 1999;Schöneberg et al 2016;Tekauz et al 2000). However, in other studies, no correlation between presence of DON and disease severity (Nesvadba et al 2006), visually infected kernels (Tekauz et al 2000), a decrease in kernel weight (Tekauz et al 2000) or presence of Fusarium spp. (Abramson et al 1998;Xue et al 2006) was found.…”

“…However, other studies could not find such a correlation between disease severity and presence of Fusarium spp. (Nesvadba et al 2006;Tekauz et al 2000) or visually infected kernels (Tekauz et al 2000). In some studies, presence of DON was correlated to the disease severity (Berger et al 2014;Buerstmayr et al 2004;Chrpová et al 2011;Legzdina and Buerstmayr 2004;Salas et al 1999;Thin et al 2004), visually infected kernels (Berger et al 2014;Legzdina and Buerstmayr 2004), a decrease in kernel weight (Chrpová et al 2011) or presence of Fusarium spp.…”

“…Fusarium infection can be determined in different ways. On the field, FHB can be determined by visual inspection of the percentage of infected florets (Yoshida et al 2007), percentage of infected spikelets (Ban and Suenaga 2000;Bérubé et al 2012;Buerstmayr et al 2004;Chrpová et al 2011;Nesvadba et al 2006;Xue et al 2006), and percentage of infected kernels in a spikelet (Urrea et al 2002) or ear (Vančo et al 2007). These percentages can be used to determine an FHB index (% incidence * % severity) (Tekauz et al 2000).…”