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ARS Home » Plains Area » Manhattan, Kansas » Center for Grain and Animal Health Research » Hard Winter Wheat Genetics Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #366438
Research Project: Genetic Improvement of Biotic and Abiotic Stress Tolerance and Nutritional Quality in Hard Winter Wheat

Location: Hard Winter Wheat Genetics Research

Title: Breeding wheat for resistance to Fusarium head blight in the Global North: China, USA and Canada

Author
item ZHU, ZHANWANG - Chinese Academy Of Agricultural Sciences
item HAO, YUANFENG - Chinese Academy Of Agricultural Sciences
item MERGOUM, MOHAMED - Kansas State University
item Bai, Guihua
item HUMPHREYS, GAVIN - Agriculture And Agri-Food Canada
item CLOUTIER, SYLVIE - Agriculture And Agri-Food Canada
item XIA, XIANCHUN - Chinese Academy Of Agricultural Sciences
item HE, ZHONGHU - Chinese Academy Of Agricultural Sciences

Submitted to: The Crop Journal
Publication Type: Review Article
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/28/2019
Publication Date: 7/19/2019
Citation: Zhu, Z., Hao, Y., Mergoum, M., Bai, G., Humphreys, G., Cloutier, S., Xia, X., He, Z. 2019. Breeding wheat for resistance to Fusarium head blight in the Global North: China, USA and Canada. The Crop Journal. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cj.2019.06.003.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cj.2019.06.003

Interpretive Summary: Fusarium head blight (FHB) is a very important disease that affects wheat in many countries. Many Chinese wheat landraces show a high level of FHB resistance and have become the most important sources of FHB resistance in breeding programs worldwide. Sumai 3 is one such cultivar and has been used as a major source of resistance. It contributed FHB resistance to more than 20 modern cultivars released in the USA and Canada. According to past breeding experience, successful strategies to develop FHB resistant cultivars mainly include gradual accumulation of favorable FHB resistance alleles in adapted cultivars, simultaneously selecting for both FHB resistance and high yielding traits, and use of marker-assisted selection together with phenotypic selection to select for FHB resistance.

Technical Abstract: The objective of this paper is to review the progress made in wheat breeding for Fusarium head blight (FHB) resistance in China, the United States of America (USA) and Canada. In China, numerous Chinese landraces possessing high levels of FHB resistance were grown before the 1950s. Later, pyramiding multiple sources of FHB resistance from introduced germplasm such as Mentana and Funo and locally adapted cultivars played a key role in combining satisfactory FHB resistance and high yield potential in commercial cultivars. Sumai 3, a Chinese spring wheat cultivar and the most important source of FHB resistance, was used in wheat breeding in the USA and Canada. Sumai 3 is a major source of FHB resistance for more than 20 modern cultivars used for wheat production in the USA and Canada, including the leading hard spring wheat cultivars Alsen, Glenn, Barlow and SY Ingmar from North Dakota and Faller and Prosper from Minnesota, and AAC Brandon from Canada. Frontana, a Brazilian wheat cultivar, T. dicoccoides and other local germplasm lines provided additional sources of resistance. The successful release of FHB resistant cultivars mostly relied on stepwise accumulation of favorable alleles of both genes for FHB resistance and high yielding, with marker-assisted selection being a valuable complement to phenotypic selection. With the Chinese Spring reference genome decoded and resistance gene Fhb1 is now cloned, new genomic tools such as genomic selection and gene editing are or will be available to breeders, which open new possibilities for development of FHB resistant cultivars.