A New Spring Wheat Germplasm Promises to Reduce Economic Losses Caused by Fusarium

By Maribel Alonso

Researchers released a new spring wheat germplasm line with resistance to Fusarium head blight. This challenging fungal disease leads to significant annual economic losses in cereal crop production, estimated at $2.7B over the period from 1998 to 2000, and poses health risks to consumers.

Fusarium head blight (FHB), or scab, is the number one fungal disease impacting small-grain cereal production in the U.S., particularly wheat and barley. The primary cause of the disease is the fungus Fusarium graminearum L., although it can also be triggered by multiple strains or species of Fusarium.  

FHB pathogens produce a toxin that contaminates the grain and flour, leading to production losses as it poses health risks for humans and animals. Over the years, it has become clear to farmers, researchers, and breeders that the most effective way to control this disastrous disease is by enhancing cereal crops with genes that show resistance to FHB. However, the source of effective resistance to FHB is currently limited in wheat and barley. Therefore, there is an urgent need to find new resistance genes that could be used to fight the disease, especially in durum wheat and barley.  

In a scientific breakthrough led by ARS Research Geneticist Xiwen Cai with the Wheat, Sorghum, and Forage Research Unit in Lincoln, NE, scientists at ARS and the North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station leveraged insights from previously published studies to develop a new spring wheat germplasm line named ‘WGC002.’ This germplasm carries a novel gene [Fhb7^The2] found in wild grass that provides significant resistance to Fusarium under diverse environments. The scientists used plant breeding techniques to select genes with the desired traits from wild grass in their breeding lines, which have now been successfully integrated into different market classes of U.S. wheat.