Location: Small Grains and Potato Germplasm Research
Project Number: 2050-21000-038-025-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 1, 2024
End Date: Oct 11, 2026
Objective:
Barley head blight is a serious disease threatening the grain quality for commercial uses, particularly for the malting industry. It is very difficult to evaluate the resistance due to the genetic nature of the resistance trait. The only way to get useful data is to do multiple evaluations in several locations and over multiple years. This collaboration will use the inoculated nursery at the University of Minnesota to evaluate Aberdeen elite breeding lines.
Approach:
ARS barley breeding program will select 100 elite lines with great potential yield and quality to evaluate their head blight disease resistance. The selected lines will be sent to the University of Minnesota where Dr. Ruth Dill-Macky will plant the seeds out in the inoculated nursery with three replications for each line. After inoculation, plants will be scored for their infection severity. Seeds will be harvested and sent back to Aberdeen for toxin measurements. The University of Minnesota collaborator will use their expertise and facilities to measure the disease and collect the data for us to determine the genotype of each line.
