Poster
Yahya Rauf 1, Junli Zhang 1, Sunish Seghal 2, Katherine Frels 3, Gideon Marais 4, Xiwen Cai 5, Qingwu Xue 1, Jackie Rudd 1, Daniel Hathcoat 6, Shuyu Liu 6
1. Texas A&M AgriLife Research-Canyon
2. South Dakota State University
3. University of Nebraska-Lincoln
4. North Dakota State University
5. USDA-ARS, Lincoln, NE
6. Soil and Crop Science, Texas A&M University
Corresponding Authors: Junli Zhang, junli.zhang@ag.tamu.edu; Yahya Rauf, yahya.rauf@ag.tamu.edu
Rauf, Yahya
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. Several FHB resistance genes (Fhb1, Fhb6,
Fhb7 and Fhb9) have been identified; however, none of them can
provide enough resistance when deployed alone. Therefore, it is highly desired to
pyramid at least two or more resistance genes to get adequate level of
resistance in wheat. Traditional winter wheat breeding takes about 10-12 years
due to the vernalization requirements, and the time involved to get near inbred
lines (>F5). Using doubled haploids (DH) can
significantly shorten the wheat breeding cycle. DH can produce 100% homozygous lines
from F1 generation in a single crop cycle, saving 3-4 years of
generation advancement time. To improve FHB resistance in hard winter wheat
region, a collaborative project for pyramiding these genes into adapted
germplasm through DH 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 DH were generated. In Fall 2025/Spring
2026 a total of 1678 embryos were rescued, and 251 plants were treated for
chromosomal doubling and now growing in greenhouse. During the summer of 2026 a
total of 2063 embryos from 10,871 haploid seeds (average embryo rate 19.0%)
were rescued. Out of 2063 embryos 1776 were retained which were infection free
after 1st week of germination on the growth media and 1179 haploid
seedlings were processed for chromosomal doubling with an expected ~1000 DH
lines. We identified 13 lines positive for Fhb1 gene which are under
seed increase and simultaneously field phenotyping for FHB, and continuing
assaying for available FHB markers to identify more lines with pyramided genes.
The DH lines are available to all collaborators for further field evaluations and
integration in the targeted recombination to accelerate FHB resistance in
regional wheat breeding programs
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