Queensland, Australia
June 9, 2015

USQ PhD candidates Joe Barry and Lea Meagher with their respective supervisors, Professor Mark Sutherland and Professor Stephen Neate.  

University of Southern Queensland (USQ) PhD candidates Joe Barry and Lea Meagher have won prestigious Grains Industry Research Scholarships which link their work at USQ’s Centre for Crop Health (CCH) with organisations in Turkey and Australia.

Funded by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), the scholarships will generate findings which feed into crop-management and plant-breeding programs which aim to increase cereal-cropping productivity in Australia and beyond.

Mr Barry is studying the two fungal species most frequently responsible for crown rot disease in winter cereals in Australia, Fusarium pseudograminearum and Fusarium culmorum.

His research is examining the growth patterns of these pathogens in their hosts, competition between them and the degree of disease they cause in wheat varieties differing in their resistance to crown rot. These studies are being supervised by CCH Director Professor Mark Sutherland.

Fusarium crown rot is a major disease in many parts of the world, including grain-growing areas of Australia and Turkey.

“My research is examining a set of 20 wheat varieties from Turkey and Australia, and how they perform when inoculated with either or both of these pathogens,” Mr Barry said.

Mr Barry’s research is being conducted in collaboration with Victorian government scientists and with CIMMYT, the International Wheat and Maize Improvement Center, in Turkey.

The project is running trials at several sites in Turkey, as well as at Wellcamp in southern Queensland and Horsham in Victoria.

“Our initial trials were planted in Turkey earlier this year and Professor Sutherland and I will be travelling to Turkey this month to inspect them prior to harvest. I will be remaining in Turkey for two months to harvest the trials, score the degree of disease in each wheat variety, and to extract DNA samples from the infected plants,” Mr Barry said.

“The samples Joe extracts will be sent back to CCH here in Toowoomba for analysis so we can determine where each fungus infects the plant, and when they’re present together, to what degree they compete,” Professor Sutherland said.

“This is the first time we’ve compared the performance of a set of Turkish and Australian varieties infected with these two pathogens across both countries. In particular we will learn more about how F. culmorum spreads inside the plant.”

According to GRDC, extreme cases of crown rot can reduce durum wheat yields by up to 90 per cent, and bread wheat yields by 50pc.

Ms Meagher’s research is looking at the mechanism of resistance genes in wheat to Australia’s two most common root-lesion nematodes, Pratylenchus thornei and P. neglectus.

Root-lesion nematodes are estimated to exist in potentially damaging levels in nearly 30pc of paddocks in GRDC’s northern grain region, and intolerant wheat varieties can lose more than 50pc in yield when nematode populations are high.

“We’re looking at the resistance genes and how they affect aspects like the nematodes’ mobility, reproduction rates and ability to penetrate different locations on the roots,” Ms Meagher said.

“The resistance mechanisms of one gene in one Pratylenchus species has been looked at previously, but we are comparing the effect of multiple genes, and in the two common Pratylenchus species.”

“What we find means we may be able to offer to pre-breeding programs advice on accumulating better combinations of resistant genes with different mechanisms which will improve their effectiveness in preventing or reducing the impact of root-lesion nematodes,” PhD supervisor Professor Stephen Neate said.

Ms Meagher has previously worked as a nematologist in sugar research in Australia, and completed her Masters in Nematology in Belgium.

She will be presenting at an international workshop on root-lesion nematodes in Turkey later this year, and while there will be planning her Turkey-based experiments with CIMMYT researchers.

Ms Meagher’s scholarship runs until March 2018 and will incorporate extensive fieldwork in Turkey and Queensland, as well as collaboration with the University of Adelaide which has offered some unique genetic populations for use in the study.

Website: http://www.usq.edu.au

Published: June 18, 2015