Climate fit durum wheat

Durum wheat is a food crop with increasing importance. Durum wheat suffers from increasing stresses partly due to global changes. Two relevant constraints are the fungal disease Fusarium head blight (FHB) and the viral disease wheat dwarf virus (WDV). In this project we will accelerate breeding for genetic resistance against these two diseases and thus make durum wheat more stress resilient by: i) Genetic analysis of a new four parent MAGIC population descending from a combination of modern cultivars with WDV resistance crossed with FHB resistant experimental lines. We intend to identify and map relevant QTL for the traits WDV resistance and FHB resistance. ii) Selection of climate fit durum wheat cultivars by starting with large segregating populations in the F3 generation which will be rigorously phenotypically selected or increase FHB resistance, and subsequently selected for improved WDV resistance to identify new cultivar candidates that will enter the cultivar development program. Selected lines will be DNA fingerprinted and used to explore on ‘reverse’ predictions, means checking for genome regions under selection in response to improved resistance.