USWBSI Abstract Viewer

2021 National Fusarium Head Blight Forum


Variety Development and Host Resistance (VDHR)

Poster # 141

Exploring Variation for FHB Resistance and Toxin Mitigation in Naked Barley

Authors & Affiliations:

John Hawkins and Kevin Smith
University of Minnesota, Department of Agronomy and Plant Breeding, St. Paul, Minnesota

Corresponding Author:

John Hawkins
University of Minnesota
hawki535@umn.edu

Abstract:

Naked barley is receiving growing interest for malt, feed, and food applications. One potential advantage of naked barley over covered barley is lower levels of deoxynivalenol (DON) due to the loss of the hull. Studies on covered barley show hull removal can eliminate some amount of DON during processing, but the role of the hull as a DON sink in naked varieties hasn’t been studied extensively. Variation for hull DON content could allow selection for stronger DON sink activity of hulls, reducing kernel DON content and the associated risks. The goals of this study are to evaluate a naked barley diversity panel for Fusarium head blight (FHB) resistance and favorable DON distribution and use that data to conduct genome-wide association studies (GWAS). The diversity panel, consisting of 242 naked spring barley lines along with one naked and five covered check varieties, was planted in irrigated FHB nurseries in St. Paul and Crookston in 2020. The St. Paul nursery was inoculated by spraying a solution containing macroconidia, while the Crookston nursery was inoculated with grain spawn. Data was collected on height, heading date and percent FHB infection in the field. Heads were harvested and separated into hull, kernel, and rachis subsamples for DON concentration analysis. Preliminary results show that the proportion of the DON mass localized in hulls, averaged across locations, ranged from 0.07 to 0.96, with mean of 0.36 and standard deviation of 0.15. This shows a high degree of variation in DON sink activity of the hull and potential for substantial toxin mitigation. On the other  hand, there is also large variation among the lines for DON concentration in the kernel, suggesting variation for disease resistance per se. There is also a great deal of variation in the percent FHB infection, which ranges in St. Paul from 7.5% to 82.5%. Rachis subsamples showed comparable DON concentrations to other tissue types, with a mean of 21.9 ppm DON, which is surprising given that FHB in barley does not exhibit “spread in the head” as in wheat. Overall, naked barley shows potentially useful variation in FHB resistance and toxin distribution. A preliminary genome wide association study is in progress for this data. This experiment was repeated in 2021 and analysis of those samples is in progress.



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