Brazil
September 2009

Source: Plant Breeding News, Edition 204
Contributed by Gisele Torres, Molecular Geneticist - Leadership of the Wheat Blast Project, Embrapa Wheat

Since April’2009, Embrapa (Brazilian Organization for Agricultural Research, is an agency of Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply) has committed US$ 130,000 in research to resistance to wheat blast, a fungal disease first reported in Brazil, in 1985.
Currently, wheat blast is spread all over Brazil’s wheat growing regions and in some countries of Latin America, as Bolivia and Paraguay, and it may pose an immediate threat to wheat production.

The pathogen attacks wheat rachis and the ear becomes white starting from the infection point. Only a few wheat cultivars have shown moderate resistance to this fungus, which is different from that of rice.

Gisele Torres, molecular geneticist from Embrapa Wheat, is the leadership of the project named Wheat Blast Genes Interaction. She explains that the main objectives of the project are: 1) phenotyping a core collection of wheat in response to infection by Pyricularia grisea and 2) prospection of genes related to resistance to the pathogen. “Wheat BGIn Project” count with a multidisciplinary team and will be running for the next 3 years (2009 – 2012). Although wheat blast disease has been identified in Brazil since the 80’s, no resistant genotypes have been developed so far.

* Plant Breeding News
An Electronic Newsletter of Applied Plant Breeding
Clair H. Hershey, Editor
Sponsored by FAO/AGPC and Cornell University, Dept. of Plant Breeding and Genetics

Website: http://www.fao.org/ag/agp/agpc/doc/services/pbn.html

Published: September 4, 2009