Predicting disease outbreaks in wheat
Prediction of disease outbreaks based on wheat cultivars and diseases genomic data models
The fungal foliar blight pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici is the causal agent of the wheat disease Septoria Tritici Blotch (STB). STB is one of the primary diseases of wheat in Europe, particularly in the northern growing regions. Up to 50% losses have been recorded during severe STB epidemics and it has been estimated that 70% of annual fungicide usage in Europe is to control this disease. Best practise control is the application of fungicides before disease appear to protect developing stem leaves, and again at ear emergence, to protect the flag and upper leaves. Therefore, STB poses a serious and persistent challenge to wheat grown in temperate climates throughout the world.
The STB threat has triggered an intensive research effort to evaluate current disease control practices and to look for novel control strategies. One of the novel strategies is to predict whether a cultivar will be resistance to STB even before the plant has been sown. This is accomplished by constructing statistical genomics modelling where information from the cultivar is used to make predictions. This project is within work package 6 of CONSUS where Prof. James Burke, Dr. Fiona Doohan, Dr. Angela Feechan and Dr. Saoirce Tracy all from UCD are also involved.
A diversity panel of 200 winter wheat varieties from Johns Innes Center has been used for this experiment. The panel represents cultivars from important wheat producers in Europe.
Picture: a) above shows a polytunnel experiment to perform part of the inoculation study with Septoria. Picture B) Shows Septoria isolates from field leaves infections
The picture above shows the experimental design with the 200 wheat varieties planted at the Lyons Farm for seed increasing.