Location: Corn, Soybean and Wheat Quality Research
Project Number: 5082-43440-002-011-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 1, 2022
End Date: Aug 31, 2027
Objective:
1. Identify the wheat genotypes of high PHS resistance as donor parents, and elite ESW wheat of superior agronomic performance as recurrent parents.
2. Catalog PHS resistance genes and QTLs and develop markers to their locations.
3. Introduce the PHS resistance genes/traits into elite ESW wheat varieties to develop PHS resistant germplasms with superior agronomic performance.
4. Validate PHS resistance and agronomic performance of the developed germplasms.
5. Assess accuracy of genomic selection for PHS.
Approach:
1. Wheat varieties proven to carry strong resistance to PHS will be identified and their seeds will be obtained from USDA-ARS NSGC collections and wheat breeding programs as donor parents of PHS resistance. Elite ESW wheat varieties/advanced breeding lines will be identified as the recurrent parents, and their seeds will be obtained from the respective breeding programs.
2. Both PHS resistance donor and recurrent ESW wheat parents will be grown in the greenhouse and evaluated for their PHS resistance by subjecting them to simulated PHS inducing conditions and determining Alpha-amylase (AA) activity and falling number (FN).
3. Known PHS resistance genes and QTLs will be compiled, and molecular markers will be developed for marker assisted selection (MAS).
4. To introduce the PHS resistance to ESW wheat, selected PHS resistant donor parents will be crossed to four elite recurrent ESW parents and the resulting F1 progenies will be backcrossed to the recurrent parent at least three times. At each backcrossing step, the resulting F1 lines will be screened using MAS and phenotyping to ensure the presence of PHS resistance genes/traits as well as markers to the recurrent parent outside of the PHS locations to accelerate recurrent parent genome (RPG) recovery.
5. The selected backcross lines will be self-pollenated to obtain backcross F2 lines, which will be further screened for PHS resistance by MAS and phenotyping. The PHS resistance germplasms will be selected based on homogeneity of the PHS resistant genes, degree of PHS resistance and RPG recovery.
6. ESW lines from cooperator wheat breeding program will be genotyped using genotyping-by-sequencing. Selected lines will be phenotyped for PHS. The data will be used in various genomic selection models to assess the accuracy of the predictions.
