Advances in genetic improvement of durable resistance to Fusarium head blight in wheat

Abstract

Wheat Fusarium head blight (FHB) is a destructive disease in wheat worldwide. Wheat resistance to FHB is a complex with five types. Each type of resistance is controlled by multiple quantitative trait loci (QTLs) with most having minor effects and being affected by environments. This chapter describes methodologies used for evaluating different types of resistance, consolidates the QTLs for type II and Type III resistance into 26 repeatable QTLs, discusses progresses made in genetics and breeding of wheat FHB resistance, and discusses possible new breeding strategies for FHB resistance improvement. The 26 repeatable QTL were located in ~100 Mb intervals based on IWGSC reference sequence map, which will be critical QTLs for functional marker development and for improvement of FHB resistance in breeding. Genomic selection (GS) together with marker-assisted selection (MAS) coupling with phenotypic selection will facilitate accumulation of multiple QTLs from different sources to create highly resistant cultivars.