Evaluation of Fusarium Head Blight Resistance in 410 Chinese Wheat Cultivars Selected for Their Climate Conditions and Ecological Niche Using Natural Infection Across Three Distinct Experimental Sites

Abstract

Exploiting wheat cultivars with stable resistance to Fusarium Head blight (FHB) and toxin accumulation is a cost-effective and environmentally friendly strategy to reduce the risk of yield losses and contamination with mycotoxins. To facilitate the deployment of stable cultivar resistance, we evaluated FHB resistance and resistance to mycotoxin accumulation in 410 wheat lines bred by local breeders from four major wheat growing regions in China after natural infection at three distinct locations (Hefei, Yangzhou and Nanping). Significant differences in disease index were observed among the three locations. The disease indexes (DI’s) in Nanping were the highest, followed by Yangzhou and Hefei. The distribution of DI’s in Yangzhou showed the best discrimination of FHB resistance in cultivars. Growing region and cultivar had significant effect on DI and mycotoxins. Among the climate factors, relative humidity and rainfall were the key factors resulting in the severe disease. Even though most cultivars were still susceptible to FHB under the strongly conducive conditions applied, the ratio of resistant lines increased in the Upper region of the Yangtze River (UYR) and the Middle and Lower Region of the Yangtze River (MLYR) between 2015 and 2019. Deoxynivalenol (DON) was the dominant mycotoxin found in Hefei and Yangzhou, while NIV was predominant in Nanping. Disease indexes were significantly correlated with DON content in wheat grain.

Evaluation of Barley and Wheat Germplasm for Resistance to Head Blight and Mycotoxin Production by Fusarium asiaticum and F. graminearum

“…Our analyses confirmed previous results that FHB severity and toxin production are correlated in wheat and barley ( Choo et al, 2004 ; Geddes et al, 2008 ; He et al, 2015 ; Yan et al, 2022 ). Unlike the previous studies, we used both F. asiaticum and F. graminearum at the same time and were able to compare these species.…”

Occurrence and field evaluation of sugarcane genotypes for resistance to pokkah boeng disease in China

“…Disease resistance evaluation in multiple environments prevents errors caused by a single environmental factor. Therefore, resistance evaluations are necessary across multiple years or locations (Buerstmayr et al, 2008; Yan et al, 2022). Cluster analysis is a method for dividing a group of objects into classes so that similar objects are in the same class (Gupta et al, 2022; Kalogiouri et al, 2021), while discriminant analysis is a multivariate analysis used to find the linear combination of features that distinguish two or more classes (Huberty, 1975; Stella, 2019).…”

Identification of Fusarium head blight sources of resistance and associated QTLs in historical and modern Canadian spring wheat

“…Of the 249 lines/varieties evaluated for FHB reactions, only 2.4% of them displayed a high level of resistance and 13.6% a moderate level of resistance as compared with 60% of them that showed moderate to high levels of FHB susceptibility ( Supplementary Table S1 ). We used the VRI of the check varieties/lines with modified threshold values described in previous studies ( Yan et al., 2020 ; Yan et al., 2022 ) to assign each tested variety/line to the different resistance categories. In contrast to Yan et al (2020 , 2022) who classified entries with a VRI of< 10% into highly resistant and 10-25% as moderately resistant, we considered lines and varieties with a VRI of <7% as highly resistant and those with 10-20% as moderately resistant.…”

“…We used the VRI of the check varieties/lines with modified threshold values described in previous studies ( Yan et al., 2020 ; Yan et al., 2022 ) to assign each tested variety/line to the different resistance categories. In contrast to Yan et al (2020 , 2022) who classified entries with a VRI of< 10% into highly resistant and 10-25% as moderately resistant, we considered lines and varieties with a VRI of <7% as highly resistant and those with 10-20% as moderately resistant. The proportion of lines and varieties that were considered highly and moderately resistant agree with a previous study that reported 2.3%, 15.5%, 41.1%, and 41.1% of the wheat samples that expressed high resistance, moderate resistance, moderate susceptibility, and high susceptibility, respectively ( Yan et al., 2020 ).…”

“…Using the Prairie Recommending Committee for wheat, rye, and triticale operating protocol ( PRCWRT, 2020 ), we assigned lines and varieties into five groups by comparing their overall VRI computed from all seven environments with checks as follows: highly resistant (VRI< 7.0), moderately resistant (7–20.0), intermediate (20.1–30.0), moderately susceptible (30.1-40.0), and highly susceptible (VRI > 40.0). These ranges were modified from previous threshold values described in Chinese wheat germplasm: highly resistant (VRI< 10%), moderately resistant (10–25%), moderately susceptible (25–45%), and highly susceptible (VRI > 45%) ( Yan et al., 2020 ; Yan et al., 2022 ).…”