SIX newly discovered barley genes that carry resistance to disease have brought hope to Australian growers.
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The discovery was the result of 10 years of pre-breeding research by Agriculture Victoria’s cereal pathology team at Horsham.
The new varieties will make it easier for plant breeders to develop future barley cultivars that can withstand common foliar diseases.
Agriculture Victoria plant pathologist Dr Mark McLean said common diseases cost barley growers and the industry about $252 million annually from reduced grain yield and quality.
“The best means of reducing the threat from these diseases is to develop resistant varieties,” he said.
Dr McLean said his research focused on the Japanese barley variety Yangsimai 3. which was found to have durable host plant resistance.
This means it has resistance that is likely to be effective for decades.
“We screened Yangsimai 3 across Australia and internationally during 2008-2010 and found that it was resistant to spot form of net blotch everywhere it was tested,” he said.
“It was also found to have novel resistance to scald, which was really exciting.”
Despite being a Japanese barley line, Dr McLean said Yangsimai 3 was well adapted to local environments both agronomically and phenotypically.
“But its resistance to spot form of net blotch and scald is what initially caught our attention,” he said.
The research has seen Yangsimai 3 crossed to commercially available varieties to produce high yielding disease resistant lines for breeders.
The resistance genes were genetically characterised by the Australian Wheat and Barley Molecular Marker Program at the University of Adelaide.
This resulted in the discovery of four resistance genes to spot form of net blotch, two resistance genes to scald and molecular markers for breeders to track the resistance traits in their breeding programs.
Resistance to the exotic disease, barley stripe rust, was also identified and genes will be genetically characterised in the future.
“In total we have identified six novel resistance genes for breeders from one variety, with more likely to come in the next year or two,” he said.
Pre-breeding work over the last 10 years has resulted in spot form of net blotch, scald and stripe rust resistant lines that have been forwarded to breeding programs.
Dr McLean said hopefully this will result in commercial barley varieties with much improved disease resistance in the not-too-distant future.