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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Aberdeen, Idaho » Small Grains and Potato Germplasm Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #322029
Title: Genetic variation and associations involving Fusarium head blight and deoxynivalenol accumulation in cultivated oat (Avena sativa L.)

Author
item BJORNSTAD, ASMUND - Norwegian University Of Life Sciences
item HE, XINYAO - Norwegian University Of Life Sciences
item TEKLE, SELAMAWIT - Norwegian University Of Life Sciences
item Esvelt Klos, Kathy
item HUANG, YUNG-FEN - National Taiwan University
item TINKER, NICHOLAS - Aafc Lethrdge Research Center
item DONG, YANHONG - University Of Minnesota
item SKINNES, HELGE - Norwegian University Of Life Sciences

Submitted to: Plant Breeding
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/6/2017
Publication Date: 7/20/2017
Citation: Bjornstad, A., He, X., Tekle, S., Esvelt Klos, K.L., Huang, Y., Tinker, N.A., Dong, Y., Skinnes, H. 2017. Genetic variation and associations involving Fusarium head blight and deoxynivalenol accumulation in cultivated oat (Avena sativa L.). Plant Breeding. 136:620-636. https://doi.org/10.1111/pbr.12502.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/pbr.12502

Interpretive Summary: Fusarium head blight is emerging as an important disease of oat in the northern hemisphere, both because of its impact on yield and because of strict limitations to the amount of the resultant toxins now imposed by the European Union for oat-based foods. This study used two complementary methods of associating measured genotypes with differences in disease response and toxin accumulation. Several quantitative trait loci were identified which are likely to contain genes that influence fusarium head blight resistance in oat. In addition, some previously held assumptions were challenged concerning the relationship between the lateness of flowering and susceptibility to disease that had been based on earlier studies of more limited samples of oat varieties. The genetic markers from this study may be useful for breeding more resistant oat lines.

Technical Abstract: Resistance in oats (Avena sativa L.) to infection by Fusarium graminearum was assessed in field trials in 2011-12 including 424 spring oat lines from North America and Scandinavia. Traits measured were Fusarium Head Blight (FHB), deoxynivalenol (DON) content, days to flowering (DTF) and days to maturity (DTM). All genotypes were genotyped with 2974 SNP markers. Population substructure was found to be small, and data were subjected to a Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) using MLM in TASSEL or Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR). There were highly significant differences among genotypes in FHB and DON. Correlations between years were high for FHB, and moderate to low for DON. FHB was strongly correlated with DTF, DON less. Accordingly, a number of the QTL identified for FHB were also phenology QTLs, with late lines having less FHB. A number of QTLs for DON were not associated with earliness, including QTLs reported in a previous paper. Most QTLs detected by TASSEL were also detected by PLSR, but the latter detected more. Genotypes with consistently low DON (and reasonably early) were detected in both Nordic and Canadian breeding programs.