Collaborative Research to Accelerate the Development of Fusarium Head Blight (FHB)-Resistant Soft Red Winter Wheat Varieties

Objective: 1. Select superior Fusarium Head Blight (FHB) resistant parents for crossing. 2. Utilize male sterile facilitated recurrent selection for development of improved populations. 3. Collaborate to evlauate in-house and regionally developed lines in FHB screening nursery. 4. Evaluate advanced line for cultivar release. 5. Enter genotypic and phenotypic data into database. Approach: Genotypic and phenotypic data will be used to select best parents for crossing and for progeny selection, with confirmation done by multi-location testing. Multi-parent populations having different sources of Fusarium Head Blight (FHB) resistance that segregate for male-sterility were developed for recurrent selection. Each year, the population is grown adjacent to locally adapted FHB resistant lines that serve as pollinators. Sterile heads are identified, harvested and highly susceptible heads removed and seed used to planted to initiate the next cycle. Collaborative testing nurseries are grown and evaluated in inoculated nurseries to obtain data for cultivar development, parent selection and for mapping studies. Results will be communicated to collaborators and to growers as appropriate. Data will be entered into a database that is under development.