Utilization of Wheatgrasses to Breed for Elite Wheat Lines with Improved Disease Resistance

Wheatgrasses provide a unique solution for disease resistance breeding in wheat. Linkage drag was one of the main reasons prohibit utilization of these natural resources. A population consisted multiple disease resistance genes originated from wheatgrasses was established in this study. The population was back crossed once to 11 different adapted wheat lines. Plant height, number of tillers, straw diameters and seed weight per plant were measured in the F5 generation. Result shows that this population performed as good as the adapted wheat background lines used to construct the population in those measured agronomic traits. This result indicates after intense selection in both agronomic traits and disease resistance originated from the wheatgrasses, linkage drag is not always an issue and we can maintain the disease resistance as well as maintaining the agronomic performance in the breeding program.