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ARS Home » Plains Area » Fargo, North Dakota » Edward T. Schafer Agricultural Research Center » Cereal Crops Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #381425
Research Project: Improvement of Biotic Stress Resistance in Durum and Hard Red Spring Wheat Using Genetics and Genomics

Location: Cereal Crops Research

Title: Translational research to incorporate novel traits: Disease resistance

Author
item AYLIFFE, MICHAEL - Commonwealth Scientific And Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
item LUO, MING - Commonwealth Scientific And Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
item Faris, Justin
item LAGUDAH, EVANS - Commonwealth Scientific And Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)

Submitted to: Book Chapter
Publication Type: Book / Chapter
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/21/2021
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Wheat plants are infected by diverse pathogenic organisms of economic significance. They include biotrophic pathogens like mildews and rusts that depend on living plant cells to proliferate. By contrast necrotrophic pathogens that cause diseases such as tan spot, Septoria nodurum blotch and spot blotch require dead or dying cells to acquire nutrients. Pioneering studies in the flax plant-flax rust pathosystem led to the ‘gene-for-gene’ hypothesis which posits that a resistance gene in the host plant recognizes a corresponding pathogen product, giving rise to an incompatible reaction (disease resistance). In contrast necrotrophic wheat pathosystems operate under an ‘inverse gene-for-gene’ system whereby recognition of a fungal necrotrophic effector by a dominant host gene product leads to a compatible interaction (disease susceptibility), and the lack of recognition of this pathogen molecule leads to resistance. More than 300 resistance/susceptibility genes have been catalogued in wheat. The majority of these encode nucleotide binding leucine rich repeat immune receptors which are a significant component of the genes selected in global wheat disease resistance breeding programs. Other resistance gene types have also been identified in wheat, in particular adult plant resistance genes. Advances in mutational genomics and the wheat pan-genome are enabling causative disease resistance/susceptibility gene discovery. This has enabled the engineering of multiple disease resistance genes combined as a gene stack in transgenic cassettes as an approach for developing more durable disease resistance in wheat.