Abstracts of Presentations at the 2024 APS North Central Division Meeting

Fusarium head blight (FHB) caused by Fusarium graminearum is a highly destructive disease in cereal crops including wheat.Use of host resistance is one of the major approaches in the management of the disease.Among the quantitative trait loci (QTL) previously identified for FHB resistance, Fhb1 derived from Sumai 3 is one of the most effective ones commonly used in wheat breeding programs.In this study, we introduced Fhb1 into six spring wheat varieties (WA8283, Linkert, ND VitPro, Surpass, Glenn, Dayn) and one durum variety (ND Riveland) via crosses and backcrosses using Alsen as the FHB resistance donor parent.The resulting nearisogenic lines (NILs) (BC7F2) with homozygous Fhb1 and their recipient parents were phenotyped for FHB in the greenhouse and field, and also genotyped by 90K and 3K single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) arrays.The results showed that only Linkert-NILs and WA8283-NILs carrying Fhb1 demonstrated significant improvement in FHB resistance compared to their respective recurrent parents, and they carried <5% and <3% of resistant donor alleles from Alsen, respectively, based on genotyping with the 90K and 3K SNP arrays.Our study indicated that FHB resistance conferred by Fhb1 is significantly influenced by the genetic background of the recipient parents.The NILs developed with Fhb1 can be used as elite germplasm for wheat breeding programs to develop new varieties with improved FHB resistance.