Online: Zoom
In-Person: 105 Cargill
PLPA Seminar Series presents - Paula Silva: Adjunct Researcher, Breeding for Disease Resistance Coordinator at the CIMMYT Wheat Diseases Phenotyping Platform Uruguay.
Title: Breeding strategies for improving pest and disease resistance in wheat
Wheat is a vital cereal, providing 20% of the daily human nutritional requirements worldwide. Though there has been sizable yield gains and production increase, with the projected rise in food demand over the next 40-years, wheat yield must continue to increase at an even accelerated pace to match the projected demand. However, yield production is constrained by biotic stresses and many breeding objectives remain for ‘yield maintenance’. Overcoming yield constraints and losses due to plant pathogenic diseases requires developing wheat varieties resilient against pathogens through genetic resistance genes. However, genetic diversity for resistance to several biotic stresses in the primary pool of wheat is limited, such as in the case of wheat blast (WB) and wheat curl mite (WCM). To date, only a few resistance genes have been named against these diseases and, interestingly, most of these resistances have been introgressed from wild relative species. Wheat wild relatives offer a potential trove of untapped resistance genes against the many pathogens that threaten our wheat crop. In this seminar, I will present applied breeding strategies for improving WB and WCM resistance in wheat with the final goal of contributing disease-resistant wheat germplasm to broaden genetic resources available for wheat breeders to sustain wheat production. Overall, these results contribute to better understand the genetic basis of WB and WCM resistance and highlight both the necessity and the promise to search for novel sources of resistance in wild wheat species to broaden the genetic diversity of resistance available for wheat improvement.