Winter wheat is mainly grown in Eastern Canada, where development of wheat resistant to Fusarium head blight (FHB), without yield and quality penalties, is important. FHB is one of the most serious diseases of wheat and deoxynivalenol (DON) is the most common mycotoxin produced by Fusarium graminearum (FG). Conventional breeding, doubled-haploid

(DH) technique and marker-assisted (MAS) selection are used in our breeding program with goal to provide growers in Eastern Canada with high yielding cultivars with increased level of FHB resistance. By using exotic sources of FHB resistance, we found that breeding lines (RC Strategy/RCATL33 population) grouped in the 3B QTL class had the lowest FHB index, DON content and FDK level and did not have a significantly lower yield or protein content compared to the lines grouped in other QTL classes (3A, 5B) or their combinations. We used Canadian Eastern soft red winter wheat, high yielding sources of FHB resistance (Vienna/25R47population), and identified QTL associated with FHB related traits on chromosomes 4B and 4D. In Canadian Eastern hard red winter wheat (Maxine/FTHP Redeemer) population, we found QTL on chromosome 2D, 4B and 4A, which explained most of the variation for FHB severity, incidence, index, DON level and plant height. All wheat commercially grown in Ontario is entered in the Performance Trial and tested in agronomy trials with and without fungicides application and for FHB resistance in three nurseries inoculated with FG. ‘Marker’, a soft red winter wheat developed by our breeding program is moderately resistant (MR) to FHB symptoms and DON level and is used as a check in Ontario (when testing new cultivars for FHB resistance). ‘UGRC Ring’ is our high yielding winter wheat assigned to moderately susceptible (MS) category, with respect to FHB symptoms, and MR category for DON level, and grown in Ontario and Quebec. Both cultivars have stable performance over last five years. Phenotyping and genotyping of additional winter wheat populations and development of new cultivars, with increased level of FHB resistance and higher yield, for growers in Eastern Canada, is in progress.