Genome wide association study to identify markers for stripe rust virulence and resistance in diverse Canadian wheat panels
Term: 4 years, beginning in 2021
Status: Ongoing
Funding Amount: $272,250
Lead Researcher(s): Dr. Reem Aboukhaddour (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Lethbridge)
Funding Partners: Alberta Wheat Commission, Results Driven Agriculture Research
Project Description
Stripe rust, caused by the fungal pathogen Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici (Pst) became an important wheat disease worldwide due to the emergence of new virulent races that can cause infection at higher temperature than before, and have wide virulence spectrum to defeat many of the known resistance (Yr) genes. In a previous project, we investigated virulence changes in the Canadian stripe rust population from 1984 to 2017. Based on the virulence profile and defeated Yr genes, we found that Pst has remarkable changes in virulence twice in Canada, once around 2000 with remarkable defeat of Yr8 and Yr9, then around 2010 when Yr10 and Yr27 defeated. Currently, Pst in Canada remain avirulents on a very limited number of known genes: Yr1, Yr5, and Yr15. The rest of genes used in differential lines lost its capacity to differentiated between races and this makes it harder to track the pathogen incursions and changes. In this project, a genome wide association study (GWAS) to identify virulence and resistance associated markers from the Canadian stripe rust fungus and wheat genomes, respectively. We will utilize our Pst collection to generate pools of molecular markers for the Pst in Canada to be applied as a fast approach to predict pathogen changes/incursions. In parallel (lead by Dr. Ragupathy), resistance associated markers from Canadian wheat panel of 250 spring wheat and Triticum accessions that has been already genotyped by Dr. Cloutier (AAFC Ottawa, a collaborator) and ~200 winter durum wheat panel available in Dr. Ragupathy’s lab will be also utilized. The project is expected to generate useful tool to track rust changes in Canada, and identify resistance in already genotyped elite lines.