Dr. Gurcharn Brar: Sask Wheat’s first PhD scholarship recipient is ready for the next step

By: Dallas Carpenter

In late 2015, the Board of Directors of the Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission (Sask Wheat) announced that it would be enhancing its wheat research and innovation activities with the introduction of undergraduate and graduate scholarships for students at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Agriculture and Bioresources.

Since then, Sask Wheat has provided $10,000 annually in undergraduate scholarships and $100,000 annually in graduate scholarships. The graduate scholarships have helped the U of S’s Crop Development Centre (CDC) support master’s and PhD graduate students who have enhanced their wheat research and development program.

The first PhD student to receive a Sask Wheat graduate scholarship was Gurcharn Brar. In March 2019, he successfully defended his thesis, Characterization of Resistance to Fusarium Head Blight in Bread and Durum Wheat, and received his PhD from the U of S. Gurcharn originally came from Punjab, India where he received a BSc from the Punjab Agricultural University.

“I saw stripe rust for the first time in our wheat crop when I was a high-school student,” he said. “I didn’t know what it was, but it intrigued me for sure. I was lucky to get admission at the University of Saskatchewan to start my grad school and start research on stripe rust for my master’s.”

Dr. Gurcharn Brar

Gurcharn completed his MSc in Plant Sciences from the U of S, focussing on characterization of wheat stripe rust, which he did under the supervision of CDC plant pathologist Randy Kutcher. Kutcher recognized Gurcharn’s potential as a researcher and that he could take on a greater challenge than researching stripe rust for his PhD.

“After I finished my master’s, I wanted to do my PhD more on the host and resistance breeding side,” said Gurcharn. “Because I did my master’s degree with Randy, he talked to (CDC wheat breeder) Pierre Hucl and Pierre said ‘I know Gurcharn is a hard-working guy and maybe we should make him work on a more challenging disease than stripe rust.’ So, they asked me to work on fusarium head blight.”

Part of Gurcharn’s PhD project was to study characteristics of CDC hard red spring wheat varieties that had been cross-bred with the Chinese variety Sumai 3, the best-known source for FHB resistance.

“Pierre developed the material in two varieties’ backgrounds, CDC Go and CDC Alsask, where he brought in three genes from Sumai 3, Fhb1, Fhb2, and Fhb5, for fusarium resistance,” said Gurcharn. “My goal was to focus on how these genes, in Canadian Hard Red Spring Wheat, affect disease suppression, mycotoxin (DON) accumulation, as well as linkage drag (bringing along unwanted genes which have a detrimental effect on agronomy & end-use quality).”

Gurcharn’s PhD also had him work with CDC durum wheat breeder Curtis Pozniak on building some FHB resistance in elite durum wheat. Gurcharn crossed emmer wheat, a relative of durum that has a moderate level of FHB resistance, with susceptible elite durum wheat to map genes showing FHB resistance that have the potential to be used in future durum breeding programs.

The genomes for many bread wheat and durum varieties have been sequenced thanks to the CTAG2 project, of which Pozniak was among the leaders and which Sask Wheat funded. Gurcharn was among the first students to use a portion of wheat’s annotated genome, which he says will be a significant tool in producing new varieties with better disease resistance.

“In my case, I was able to use the genome sequence data to look at the genes that are present in the chromosome interval associated with disease resistance or agronomy,” he explained. “With the aid of the available wheat genome, you can then look at the gene level and see the type of genes with their physical location.

“Certain types of genes are associated with disease resistance that can further be explored for their potential role in disease improvement and introgression into other cultivars. With the help of other genomic sources, such as expression level of genes at different growth stages of wheat, it can help pin-point some likely candidates for your trait of interest.”

Gurcharn’s aptitude and hard work in studying FHB and stripe rust in wheat, not to mention his training under the renowned breeders and pathologists at the CDC, earned him several honors and allowed him to publish several academic papers. As a result, he is well known and is now sought after by several institutions.

The next step in Gurcharn’s career remains a mystery, at the moment. But two things remain certain:

“I love Saskatchewan more than any other province,” he says. “And I like to say that I am in a long-term relationship with wheat and stripe rust.”