Fusarium head blight (FHB),
mainly incited by Fusarium graminearum Schwabe, has caused great
losses in grain yield and quality of wheat and barley globally. Fhb7, a gene with a major effect on FHB resistance, was
recently cloned and found to encode a glutathione S-transferase (GST).
Fhb7 originated from 7E chromosome of Thinopyrum
ponticum and confers broad resistance to Fusarium species. However,
the high-throughput diagnostic markers are not available for breeding
selection, which hampers wide deployment of Fhb7 in breeding programs. To
develop such DNA markers for high-throughput screening
of the Fhb7, we designed two kompetitive
allele specific PCR (KASP) markers (KASP-GST1 and KASP-GST2) based
on the promoter and coding sequences of GST homologs and both markers
cosegregated with Fhb7 FHB resistance in a mapping population. To
validate their usefulness in marker-assisted
selection (MAS) in breeding programs, the two codominant gene markers were validated to be diagnostic for Fhb7 in another
biparental mapping population and one natural panel. Analysis of 244 Thinopyrum
accessions using the two diagnostic gene markers identified only six accessions
with the Fhb7 resistance allele, and three of them were cytologically
confirmed to be Th. Ponticum, the species in which Fhb7
was originally identified. In addition, sequencing GST homologs in
selected samples from five Thinopyrum species identified three
haplotypes of GST. The development of the diagnostic markers in this
study will facilitate the deployment of Fhb7 in wheat
breeding programs to improve
FHB resistance.