Two classes of genes are used for breeding rust resistant wheat. The first class, called R (for resistance) genes, are pathogen race specific in their action, effective at all plant growth stages and probably mostly encode immune receptors of the nucleotide binding leucine rich repeat (NB-LRR) class. The second class is called adult plant resistance genes (APR) because resistance is usually fun...

New races of Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici (Pst), the causal pathogen of wheat stripe rust, show high virulence to previously deployed resistance genes and are responsible for large yield losses worldwide. To identify new sources of resistance we performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) using a worldwide collection of 1000 spring wheat accessions. Adult plants were evaluated under...

BACKGROUND Resistance gene analogues (RGAs) have been isolated from many crops and offer potential in breeding for disease resistance through marker-assisted selection, either as closely linked or as perfect markers. Many R-gene sequences contain kinase domains, and indeed kinase genes have been reported as being proximal to R-genes, making kinase analogues an additionally promising target. The...

Puccinia triticina f. sp. tritici (Eriks.), the causal agent of leaf rust, causes substantial yield losses in wheat production. In wheat many major leaf rust resistance genes have been overcome by virulent races. In contrast, the prehaustorial resistance (phr) against wheat leaf rust detected in the diploid wheat Einkorn (Triticum monoccocum var. monococcum) accession PI272560 confers race-inde...

The "evolution of increased competitive ability" (EICA) hypothesis proposes that escape from natural enemies, e.g., after transcontinental introductions, alters the selection regime because costly defenses no longer enhance fitness. Such an evolutionary loss of defenses enables resources to be directed toward growth or other traits improving performance. We tested the EICA hypothesis in a novel...

Morphological studies and phylogenetic analysis based on the ITS sequence data showed that there is considerable differences within the Puccinia striiformis complex on members of Triticeae(Triticum and Hordeum), Dactylis glomerata and Poa pratensis. Based on the above molecular and morphological data, we suggest dividing P. striiformis as follows: - P. striiformis s. str. mainly on Triticeae. -...