SEVERAL studies have been carried out, mainly in the U.S.A., on the inheritance of resistance to the leaf blotch (or scald) disease of barley, caused by Rhynchosporium secalis (Oudem.) J. J. Davies. Mackie (1929) found that resistance in an unspecified variety was controlled by a single recessive gene. Riddle and Briggs (1950) identified a single dominant gene conferring resistance in La Mesita, which was also present with a recessive gene in Trebi and Cal jfornia 1311 (= Modoc), and with one or more additional dominant genes in Turk. A designation for genes conferring resistance to R. secalis was first used by Bryner (1957), who allocated the symbol Rha and Turk), Rh4 (in La Mesita, Osiris and Trebi), Rh42 (an allele at the Rh4 locus, in Modoc) and Rh5 (in Turk). These genes were shown to be specific against certain races of the pathogen. The Rh3 and Rh4 loci were very closely linked on chromosome 3 (Dyck and Schaller, 1961a, b), and Rh3 was considered to be identical, allelic or closely linked to the Rh locus in Brier.