Mapping of quantitative trait loci for traits linked to fusarium head blight in barley

Abstract

Fusarium head blight (FHB) is a devastating disease occurring in small grain cereals worldwide. The disease results in the reduction of grain yield, and mycotoxins accumulated in grain are also harmful to both humans and animals. It has been reported that response to pathogen infection may be associated with the morphological and developmental traits of the host plant, e.g. earliness and plant height. Despite many studies, effective markers for selection of barley genotypes with increased resistance to FHB have not been developed. In the present study, we investigated 100 recombinant inbred lines (RIL) of spring barley. Plants were examined in field conditions (three locations) in a completely randomized design with three replications. Barley genotypes were artificially infected with spores of Fusarium culmorum before heading. Apart from the main phenotypic traits (plant height, spike characteristic, grain yield), infected kernels were visually scored and the content of deoxynivalenol (DON) mycotoxin was investigated. A set of 70 Quantitative Trait Loci (QTLs) were detected through phenotyping of the mapping population in field conditions and genotyping using a barley Ilumina 9K iSelect platform. Six loci were detected for the FHB index on chromosomes 2H, 3H, 5H, and 7H. A region on the short arm of chromosome 2H was detected in which many QTLs associated with FHB-and yield-related traits were found. This study confirms that agromorphological traits are tightly related to FHB and should be taken into consideration when breeding barley plants for FHB resistance.

Characterizing Winter Wheat Germplasm for Fusarium Head Blight Resistance Under Accelerated Growth Conditions

“…Similarly, high genetic variation for heading ( Zanke et al, 2014 ), anthesis ( Bogard et al, 2011 ), spike length ( Zhai et al, 2016 ), and FLA ( Liu et al, 2017 , 2018 ) has been reported in winter wheat. These traits are important for agronomic adaptation and can have pleiotropic effects on disease severity, which may delay the use of resistance alleles in commercial cultivars ( Gervais et al, 2002 ; Buerstmayr et al, 2020 ; Ogrodowicz et al, 2020 ). However, in this present study, we found very weak correlations between AUDPC (FHB) and all five agronomic traits measured.…”

Host Genotype and Weather Effects on Fusarium Head Blight Severity and Mycotoxin Load in Spring Barley

“…isolates, inoculation method, plant development and morphology. Hence, exploitation of FHB QTL is challenging because resistance appears to be exclusively quantitative in elite barley cultivars and determines the basal level of infection [20,[44][45][46]. Additionally, basal FHB resistance is associated with different components (resistance types I to VI) contributing independently to different layers of defence, which are often not equally cumulated or strongly expressed in one genotype.…”

Metabolomic Aspects of Conservative and Resistance-Related Elements of Response to Fusarium culmorum in the Grass Family

“…Plants were cultivated in the phytotron of the Plant Cultivation Center of the Institute of Plant Genetics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland, Poznań. Barley genotypes came from recombinant inbred lines of Hordeum vulgare MCam, obtained from the cross between the Polish cultivar Lubuski and a Syrian breeding line—Cam/B1/CI08887//CI05761—selected from the materials of the Institute of Plant Genetics, Polish Academy of Sciences on the basis of previous studies [ 14 ]. Two extremely different lines of barley—the MCam 88 line (hereafter referred to as Hs) and the resistant MCam 59 line (hereafter referred to as Hr)—were taken for metabolomic analysis.…”