Staying ahead of ever evolving cereal pathogens: management by early detection and genetic host resistance

Dr. Gurcharn Singh Brar, The University of British Columbia

Start Date: March 1, 2021
End Date: February 28, 2025

AWC’s funding: $104,362

Foliar pathogens can cause significant yield and quality loss in cereal crops in conducive growing seasons. In western Canada, particularly Alberta, stripe rust is an emerging threat to wheat production and breeders have started to breed for resistance relatively recently. Rust pathogens evolve rapidly to gain virulence and defeat host resistance over a short time period which makes it imperative for researchers to keep up with the identification of new resistance genes. In addition, it is also imperative to monitor pathogen populations on a regular basis to identify the most recent races and genetic lineages that can threaten current cultivars. Similarly, tan spot is another important wheat disease that can cause losses in certain years, particularly in warmer prairie regions. In barley, net blotch is an economically important disease across western Canada and the causal pathogen's virulence and prevalence is increasing over time. Nearly all barley cultivars (including the most popular ones) in western Canada have poorer resistance than the moderately resistant checks. The current proposal targets all three afore-mentioned diseases of wheat and barley for characterization of the pathogen populations as well as identification of novel sources of resistance. The goal of the proposal is to generate information for wheat geneticists and breeders in western Canada, which will help them breed for resistance.