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SESSION 4: GENETICS OF HOSTS – PLANT RESISTANCE TO FUSARIUM,
VARIETY DEVELOPMENT
FHB Resistance in Soft Red Winter Wheat: Breeding
and Genomic Selection
C. Sneller, A. Hoffstetter, A. Cabrera
The Ohio State University, 1680 Madison Avenue, Wooster Ohio, 44691, USA
E-mail: sneller.5@osu.edu
Soft Red Winter Wheat (SRWW) adapted to the Eastern US has considerable
resistance to Fusarium Head Blight (FHB). Breeders have effectively used
traditional breeding to utilize this resistance in developing new cultivars. Our
objectives are 1) review the evidence of resistance SRWW, 2) assess breeding
progress for FHB resistance in SRWW, 3) conduct association analysis of
resistance QTL, and 4) use genomic selection to improve FHB resistance.
The USDA has funded FHB research since 1996 including a cooperative nursery
to evaluate FHB resistance in breeding lines prior to release as cultivars. Using
that data from those trials and other data it is apparent that SRWW has useful
variation for many types of resistance including resistance to toxin accumulation:
high levels of all resistant mechanisms are readily found. An analysis of
phenotypes of breeding lines evaluated from 1996-2012 indicate that breeders
have been successful using phenotypic selection to improve FHB resistance in
SRWW. While there has been some use of MAS for Fhb1 and other QTL, most of
the gain in resistance is apparently due to native SRWW genetics.
Biparental crosses have revealed some QTL for SRWW FHB resistance. Our
association analysis suggests that in breeding populations that most of the
genetic variation is due to genes with small effects. We have implemented
genomic selection (GS) for FHB resistance. Using cross validation we estimate
the relative efficiency (RE = r/sqrt(h 2 )) of GS versus phenotypic selection for FHB
resistance is 0.47. In our breeding scheme a RE of 0.47 provides a RE of GS
versus phenotypic selection on a per year basis of 2.35. New estimates using
additional markers and phenotypic data will be presented as well as some results
from implementing GS.
Keywords: Fusarium, breeding, genomic, selection
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