W602 Functional Evidence for Genes Underlying Resistance QTL in Barley to Powdery Mildew

Date: Sunday, January 15, 2012
Time: 8:20 AM
Room: Town and Country
Patrick Schweizer , Leibniz Inst. of Plant Genetics & Crop Plant Research (IPK), Gatersleben, Germany
Annika Spies , Syngenta Co.
Viktor Korzun , KWS LOCHOW GMBH, Bergen, Germany
Axel Himmelbach , Leibniz- Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), Gatersleben, Germany
Dimitar Douchkov , Leibniz Inst. of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Res., Gatersleben, Germany
Race-nonspecific (basal) pathogen resistance is of high importance to plant breeders due to its durability. However, it is usually controlled by multiple quantitative trait loci and therefore, difficult to handle in breeding practice. Knowing about the underlying genes would allow a more targeted exploitation by allele introgressions. In order to identify genes that mediate race-nonspecific resistance of barley to the powdery mildew fungus Blumeria graminis f.sp. hordei we combined a functional-genomics approach based on genomewide transcript profiling and transient-induced gene silencing (TIGS, 1400 genes) with association-genetic (re-sequencing) and meta-QTL mapping approaches. This guided us to a shortlist of approximately 40 candidates with converging evidence for an important role in race-nonspecific resistance of barley. Candidates of special interest encode proteins involved in cell-death regulation such as Lsd1 or WRKY2 and in cell-wall re-shaping such as germin-like proteins or cellulose-synthase like proteins. Data of converging evidence of some strong candidates will be discussed. In general, we believe that the integration of functional-genomic with genetic approaches allows for a targetted and accelerated discovery of genes underlying complex, quantitative traits in barley and in other crop plants, with the prospect to utilize and combine favourable alleles in a knowledge-driven approach.