http://www.cimmyt.

org/on-roman-robigalia-day-scientists-size-up-battle-against-centuries-old-
wheat-rust-disease/
The International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT)

On Roman Robigalia
Day, scientists size up
battle against
centuries-old wheat
rust disease
by Matthew O’Leary / April 18, 2016

CIMMYT scientist Ravi Singh inspects wheat at the quarantined UG99 wheat stem
rust screening nursery in Njoro, Kenya. University of Minnesota/David Hansen

Cruel Robigo, do not injure the young wheat; let its tender tip
quiver on the surface of the ground. I beg you to allow the crop,
nurtured under heaven’s propitious stars, to grow until it is ripe
for harvest. Yours is no gentle power. The wheat which you
have marked, the sorrowful farmer counts as already lost — “A
prayer to Robigo” written by Ovid, the poet.
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — Devastating fungal wheat rusts
have perplexed farmers since ancient times. For the Romans,
the agricultural festival Robigalia celebrated each year on April
25 was dedicated to appeasing the rust god “Robigus,” known
also as the goddess “Robigo,” a literal translation of the
feminine Latin word for rust.

To his supplicants, Robigus personified wheat rust, which

historical records show reached epidemic levels, destroyed
crops and posed a severe threat to food security in the time of
the Roman Empire. The main rituals of the Robigalia festival
included processions, chariot races, sacrificing a dog and
possibly other animals, followed by a feast in efforts to protect
the staple food crop from disease.

The history of wheat, one of the first domesticated food crops,

is entwined with the history of rust disease, first recorded in
pre-biblical times. Mention of crops devastated by fungal or
mildew diseases appear in the Old and New Testaments of the
Bible.

PRESENT-DAY SCOURGE

Despite historical records and rituals attesting to the severe

impact of wheat rust, detailed data showing the intensity and
scale of the disease have only been recorded since the
20th century, said Ravi Singh, distinguished scientist and head
of bread wheat improvement at the International Maize and
Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

“Rust disease occurs in most parts of the world where wheat is

grown,” Singh said. “In recent years, the risk wheat rust
presents to global food security has been well documented and
cases from 40, to 50, to 60 percent crop loss, to total crop
failures have been recorded.”

Often referred to as the “polio of agriculture,” the infectious

fungal disease latches on using wheat plants as a host, feeding
on sugar and nutrients, leaving plants depleted and ultimately
dead. Left untreated, wheat rust diseases spread through the
release of billions of spores, which travel by wind, people or
cargo to other plants, crops, regions and countries. Each spore
 has the ability to start a new infection when it makes contact
with a new plant and has the potential to strike down a
farmer’s entire crop in a matter of weeks.

ANATOMY OF A DISEASE

Wheat leaf showing symptoms of stripe rust (also known as yellow rust), a disease
caused by Puccinia striiformis, growing on an experimental plot at Pakistan’s
National Agricultural Research Centre (NARC) in Islamabad, photographed after
rain. Photo credit: A. Yaqub/CIMMYT.

The three main types are leaf (or brown) rust, which grows in
moderate climate at temperatures between 20 to 25 degrees
Celsius (68 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit), stem (or black) rust
which grows in warmer climates between 23 to 30 degrees
Celsius and stripe (or yellow) rust which grows in the cool
season from 10 to 17 degrees Celsius.

The main defense farmers can deploy against rust pathogens is

the use of resistant varieties or chemical fungicides, Singh
said. The quick evolving nature of wheat rust has kept up with
scientists’ effort to thwart it, he added.

The work of scientists in building genetic resistance takes two

forms known as major (or race-specific) genes and adult-plant
resistance based on minor genes. Major resistance genes
protect the wheat plants from infection by specific strains of
rust, while adult plant resistance stunts the pathogen by
reducing the infection frequency and by limiting its nutrient
intake from the host wheat plant. Some of the longer-lasting
adult-plant resistance genes were shown to provide protection
against multiple diseases for decades and have not succumbed
to a mutated strain of rust so far.
“We have been managing the disease but we have not yet
overcome it,” said Singh. “Wheat is grown all over the world and
farmers use different strategies to control it, although good
resistance may be built up in one area, suddenly there will be
an outbreak of a mutated rust form in another area that does
not recognize it.”

The scenario described by Singh was observed in 1998 when

the destructive strain of Ug99 stem rust broke out in the
highlands of Uganda and has now spread throughout 13
countries from Egypt to South Africa, Yemen and Iran. It is
virulent to many resistance genes which have previously
protected wheat against stem rust, explained Singh.

The Ug99 crisis led to the formation of the Durable Rust

Resistance in Wheat project, which recently launched a new
stage, the $24 million Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat project.
Both projects have been hosted at Cornell University under the
umbrella of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative and have
received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and
the UK Department for International Development.

Although Ug99-resistant varieties are available,

a study screening of 200,000 wheat varieties grown in 22
African and Asian countries found that only 5 to 10 percent of
the planted area consisted of varieties with adequate
resistance.

ADULT PLANT RESISTANCE

Breeding wheat varieties with several rust-resistance genes is

key to ensuring that when a pathogen mutates to overcome
one defense, others serve as insurance to keep up the fight.

“This is our strategy for developing durable rust resistance in

wheat,” said Ronnie Coffman, international professor of plant
breeding and director of International Programs of the College
of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University.

“Ravi Singh of CIMMYT has led the effort to combine several

minor genes to produce ‘adult plant resistance,’” Coffman said.
“So far, it is working well, theoretically because several genes
cannot be simultaneously overcome.”
To really have impact in the fight against stem rust and reduce
the risk of mutated strains, the ideal global action is to replace
all of the world wheat crops with resistant varieties and
preferably those with high to adequate adult-plant resistance,
Singh said.

However, in much of the developed world, including the

European Union, United States, Australia, South America and
China, the use of chemical fungicides to control rust has
increased significantly due to the availability of relatively
cheap generic fungicides that can provide protection to a
range of common wheat diseases allowing breeders to focus
mainly on high-yielding varieties lacking adequate resistance
to rusts.

The continued dependence on chemical fungicides is not

sustainable as it will eventually cause wheat rust diseases to
develop a resistance, which is already happening in some
areas where unjudicial use prevails, said Coffman.

“Wheat breeding institutions, companies and farmers need to

see the bigger picture and reinforce the idea that breeding and
growing resistant varieties is a high priority to avoid
consequences from major rust epidemics on global food
security when even a portion of the predominant staple crop is
wiped out,” Singh said.

Wheat makes up an average of 20 percent of calories and 20

percent of protein consumed in the human diet.

Coffman believes the key to increasing the use of adult plant

resistance — or combinations of multiple race-specific
resistance genes — is to market varieties that are high yielding
and superior in quality, in addition to being rust resistant to
farmers and seed companies. Failing that, he said, farmers will
have no enthusiasm for changing varieties unless and until rust
actually strikes.

And that may be too late.

Wheat quality improvement at CIMMYT
and the use of genomic selection on it
Posted by gabrielamartinez on May 24, 2017, in Journal Articles
The International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT) leads the
Global Wheat Program, whose main objective is to increase the productivity of wheat
cropping systems to reduce poverty in developing countries. The priorities of the
program are high grain yield, disease resistance, tolerance to abiotic stresses
(drought and heat), and desirable quality. TheWheat Chemistry and Quality
Laboratory has been continuously evolving to be able to analyze the largest number
of samples possible, in the shortest time, at lowest cost, in order to deliver data on
diverse quality traits on time to the breeders formaking selections for advancement
in the breeding pipeline. The participation of wheat quality analysis/selection is
carried out in two stages of the breeding process: evaluation of the parental
lines for new crosses and advanced lines in preliminary and elite yield trials.
Thousands of lines are analyzed which requires a big investment in resources.
Genomic selection has been proposed to assist in selecting for quality and other
traits in breeding programs. Genomic selection can predict quantitative traits and is
applicable to multiple quantitative traits in a breeding pipeline by attaining historical
phenotypes and adding high-density genotypic information. Due to advances in
sequencing technology, genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism markers
are available through genotyping-by-sequencing at a cost conducive to application
for genomic selection. At CIMMYT, genomic selection has been applied to predict all
of the processing and end-use quality traits regularly tested in the spring wheat
breeding program. These traits have variable levels of prediction accuracy, however,
they demonstrated thatmost expensive traits, dough rheology and baking final
product, can be predicted with a high degree of confidence. Currently it is being
explored howto combine both phenotypic and genomic selection to make more
efficient the genetic improvement for quality traits at CIMMYT spring wheat breeding
program.

Source: Wheat quality improvement at CIMMYT and the use of genomic selection on
it

Tags: Food security, genetic improvement, Wheats

How can we improve crop genotypes to

increase stress resilience and
productivity in a future climate? A new
crop screening method based on
 productivity and resistance to abiotic
stress
Posted by gabrielamartinez on June 15, 2017, in Journal Articles
The need to accelerate the selection of crop genotypes that are both resistant to and
productive under abiotic stress is enhanced by global warming and the increase in
demand for food by a growing world population. In this paper, we propose a new
method for evaluation of wheat genotypes in terms of their resilience to stress and
their production capacity. The method quantifies the components of a new index
related to yield under abiotic stress based on previously developed stress indices,
namely the stress susceptibility index, the stress tolerance index, the mean
production index, the geometric mean production index, and the tolerance index,
which were created originally to evaluate drought adaptation. The method, based on
a scoring scale, offers simple and easy visualization and identification of resilient,
productive and/or contrasting genotypes according to grain yield. This new selection
method could help breeders and researchers by defining clear and strong criteria to
identify genotypes with high resilience and high productivity and provide a clear
visualization of contrasts in terms of grain yield production under stress. It is also
expected that this methodology will reduce the time required for first selection and
the number of first-selected genotypes for further evaluation by breeders and provide
a basis for appropriate comparisons of genotypes that would help reveal the biology
behind high stress productivity of crops.

Source: Journal of Experimental Botany | Oxford Academic

Tags: climate change, Food security

Germinate 3 : development of a common

platform to support the distribution of
experimental data on crop wild relatives
Posted by gabrielamartinez on June 15, 2017, in Journal Articles
Conservation and exploitation of crop wild relative species is an important
component in ensuring food security and improving current agricultural output. By
identifying agriculturally important characteristics that express favorable response to
both biotic and abiotic stress currently unused by breeders, the incorporation of this
new genetic material into genetic background stocks may help mitigate problems
imposed by climate change, land degradation, and population pressure. This is
particularly important in countries that will be more severely affected by the threat of
reduced yields. The ability to effectively manage genetic resources collections and
integrate unique and diverse data types is crucial in exploring, understanding, and
exploiting the diversity contained within genebanks. Providing a common interface
through which experimental and background data can be disseminated to both
researchers and breeders will bring focus and facilitate community building into
research communities. We have taken wild barley (Hordeum spp.) and potato
(Solanum spp.) collections along with wheat (Triticum spp.) and maize (Zea mays
subsp. mays) and their wild relatives and incorporated this data into web-based
information resources built using the Germinate platform
(https://ics.hutton.ac.uk/get-germinate, accessed 4 Apr. 2017). We have tailored
these to better meet the demands of researchers by developing both new data
visualization tools and integration with current software such as Helium, Flapjack,
and CurlyWhirly (https://ics.hutton.ac.uk/software, accessed 4 Apr. 2017) and
presented the data in a common platform. While the underlying species differ, the
approach taken ensures that tools are compatible across all database instances. We
will describe these database instances and show that Germinate offers a common
platform that will aid in the exploration and wider use of these species.

Source: Crop Science v. 57, p.1-15

Tags: Technologies