Development Of Molecular Markers And Pre-Emptive Breeding For Resistance To Russian Wheat Aphid In Wheat And Barley: An International Collaboration

MEHMET CAKIR , JANINE VITOU, SCOTT HALEY, FRANK PEAIRS, DOLORES MORNHINWEG , JOCOB LAGE, HAYDN KUCHE , BERTUS JACOBS , IAIN BARCLAY , VICKY TOLMAY, JOYCE MALINGA , OWAIN EDWARDS , MANDY CHRISTOPHER , ANA MARIA CASTRO

San Diego California, USA

Conferencia; Plant & Animal Genome XVII Conference; 2009

Town and County International Conference Center

The Russian wheat aphid, Diuraphis noxia, is one of the most damaging insect pests of wheat and barley. This aphid is not yet present in Australia but its potential introduction would cause significant concern for the Australian grains industry. Since the use of resistant varieties, as opposed to using insecticides, has been found to be most economical method of managing this pest, the Australian Cereal Industry has decided to invest in a pre-breeding project that is highly collaborative with other RWA workers around the world. The objectives of the project are to: 1) characterize available RWA resistant wheat and barley germplasm against available RWA biotypes in France, USA and elsewhere 2) identify molecular markers closely linked to resistance genes and validate them in Australian wheat and barley backgrounds, and 3) introgress RWA resistance into Australian wheat and barley backgrounds. To date, 12 wheat lines that are known to be resistant to USA RWA biotypes 1 and 2 were evaluated in standard seedling screening tests against four RWA biotypes collected from Mexico, Hungary, South Africa and France in Montpellier, France, and endemic biotypes in Kenya and Argentina. Most of the lines have shown moderate to good levels of resistance to most biotypes except the Hungarian biotype. Results from the testing of 99 barley lines against US biotype 1 in Oklahoma-USA have shown that most barley lines were susceptible. Results from allelism tests and diversity analysis of RWA resistant wheat and barley lines with the molecular markers will also be discussed.