Working with CYMMT on stripe rust

Working with CYMMT on stripe rust

Farm and Ranch January 25, 2011 Kulvinder Gill, who holds the Vogel Endowed Chair in Wheat Breeding and Genetics at Washington State University says stripe rust is the most serious disease currently facing northwest wheat growers. Gill says his program is doing a lot of cooperation on stripe rust with CYMMT,

the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico.

Gill: “So CYMMT approach is they are transferring the genes that cannot be defeated by stripe rust. They don‘t provide complete resistance so when they have those type of resistance genes the disease still lives on the plant a little bit where the yield effect is not that much. So our strategy is get all those genes here, study them, then pick one or two to put into Pacific Northwest varieties and then also add the genes that can be defeated by the rust but provide much better resistance. So I believe we need more. We need those durable type genes that CYMMT is working on and then the kind we are identifying from other sources. We plan to put those too into a singe line.”

The most recent forecast of stripe rust for 2011 from Xianming Chen with the Agricultural Research Service at Pullman is for a moderate level of yield losses this year for both susceptible winter and spring wheats. Last year saw a severe epidemic of stripe rust caused yield losses in the region.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on Northwest Aginfo Net.

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