Project Number: 5440-21000-031-01
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Apr 01, 2010
End Date: Mar 31, 2015

Objective:
The main objective of this project is to develop improved winter wheat and barley germplasm and cultivars with stem rust resistance that will be winter-hardy with high yield and end-use quality, environmentally stable in production, and provide an increased return per grower input. Stem rust resistant plant materials adapted to both conventional and organic production systems will be developed.

Approach:
Crosses will be made in the greenhouse using selected wheat and barley germplasm parents possessing various combinations of adequate winter-hardiness and heat and drought tolerance, high yield, resistance to Ug99 stem rust and other races of rust prevalent in the northern Great Plains, other disease and insect resistance or tolerance, improved end use quality attributes, and good straw strength. Germplasm will include locally adapted lines and cultivars, introduced materials from private programs, other regions or countries having unique characteristics, and, when necessary, derivatives from related species and genera developed by more basic germplasm programs. Marker assisted selection will be used for allele enrichment in the early generations and genotyping advanced lines for line characterization. F1 seed will be increased in the greenhouse or Yuma, AZ to create a large number of populations of ample size. F2 and F3 populations will be grown at Lincoln or Mead, NE. F3 derived lines will continue to be selected with statewide testing beginning in the F6. Field testing will be supplemented with greenhouse testing for leaf and stem rust testing at Lincoln, NE and St. Paul, MN (USDA ARS Cereal Disease Laboratory). Standard and molecular genetic analytical procedures to determine the inheritance of the traits that are useful to enhance adapted cultivars. Agrobase GenII software, SAS or GENSTAT will be used to analyze data.