Poster # 514

Yahya Rauf ¹, Junli Zhang ¹, Sunish Seghal ², Katherine Frels ³, Gideon Marais ⁴, Xiwen Cai ⁵, Jessica Rupp Noller ⁶, Qingwu Xue ¹, Jackie Rudd ¹, Daniel Hathcoat ⁷, Shuyu Liu ⁷
1. Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center, Amarillo, TX
2. Department of Agronomy, Horticulture & Plant Science, South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD
3. Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE
4. Department of Plant Science, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND
5. USDA-ARS, Wheat, Sorghum and Forage Unit, Lincoln, NE
6. Department of Plant Pathology, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS
7. Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX
Corresponding author: Shuyu Liu Email: Shuyu.Liu@ag.tamu.edu

Rauf, Yahya

yahyaagri@yahoo.com

Fusarium head blight (FHB) is a devasting wheat fungal disease that has caused significant grain yield and quality losses worldwide. Developing FHB resistant varieties is an effective, economical, and environmentally friendly approach to mitigate these losses. The FHB resistance is quantitatively inherited involving several genes which are further highly influenced by the environment, genetics backgrounds, susceptibility genes, and epistasis. Several FHB resistance genes, Fhb1, Fhb6 and Fhb7 with variable effects have been identified and utilized in breeding programs. To improve FHB resistance in hard winter wheat (HWW) region, a coordinated project for pyramiding these genes into adapted germplasm through doubled haploid and marker assisted selection was funded by US Wheat and Barley Scab Initiative. Since 2022, this project accomplished significant goals on standardizing protocols and improving success ratios on haploid embryos, chromosomal doubling with fertile wheat spikes. We rescued 2291 embryos from 25 crosses, with 707 haploid plants and 360 doubled haploid lines (DHLs) in 2023. In 2024, out of 2176 embryos 634 haploid plants and 351 DHLs were generated. In 2025, we received F₁ seed from four collaborators and planted for downstream DH development processing in October. Based on marker screening, we have identified 13 lines (TX22DH280, TX23DH209, TX23DH212, TX23DH217, TX23DH221, TX23DH227, TX23DH235, TX23DH236, TX23DH237, TX23DH249, TX23DH252, TX23DH92, TX23DH93) positive for Fbh1 gene. We are increasing seeds, simultaneously field phenotyping for FHB, and continue assaying for FHB available markers to identify more lines with pyramided genes. The DHLs are available to all collaborators for further research and integration in the targeted recombination to accelerate FBH resistant wheat breeding process.

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