Institut für Pflanzenschutz in Ackerbau und Grünland
Wheat is the most important human food, providing 20% of the dietary calories and proteins worldwide, thus central for the Bioeconomy. However, fungal diseases have a significant impact on cereal production. For instance, the wheat powdery mildew (PM) and the wheat yellow rust (YR) are responsible for substantial yield losses and extra spending for plant protection. To minimize this cost and be in line with Directive 2009/128/EC (reducing the use of pesticides by 50% until 2030 in the EU), it urgently calls for new approaches in disease resistance breeding. A primary limitation of the current resistance evaluation methods is that the trait – resistance – is assessed typically as the end-point of the plant-pathogen interactions and delivers no information about the early and intermediate steps and involved resistance mechanisms. This usually leads to the selection of non-durable race-specific resistances regularly overcome by the pathogen. In opposition to this, we will determine utterly novel resistance genes of the highly durable nonhost-resistance (NHR) using innovative micro-phenotyping developed by . This will provide the unique possibility to eradicate an entire disease by turning wheat into a nonhost for the targeted pathogen. This presents a significant step into a real Bioeconomy, and associated breeders will benefit substantially by prime access to the knowledge and the NON-GMO material gained during the project for their programs.
Federal Ministry of Education and Research
