Emails: justinc8@student.ubc.ca; vfett@mail.ubc.ca; meng.li@botany.ubc.ca; gurcharn@ualberta.ca

Canada is one of the world’s leading producers of wheat and has exported over 21 tons of wheat annually since 2017. Wheat plays an important part in the Canadian economy, but several fungal diseases threaten Canada’s wheat production. Fusarium head blight (FHB), stripe rust (YR), leaf rust (LR), and stem rust (SR) can all cause significant yield losses in susceptible wheat cultivars under optimal environmental conditions, which can result in significant economic losses.

Therefore, the Prairie Recommending Committee for Wheat, Rye and Triticale (PRCWRT) classifies theses fungal diseases as priority one, for which new wheat varieties need to have a moderate level of genetic resistance. Genetic resistance is a cost-efficient and sustainable approach for disease management by lowering the need for intensive fungicide application in crop fields.

The presence of multiple resistance genes in the same genotype improves the efficacy and durability of the resistance. Now, we crossed over 10 Canada Western Red Spring (CWRS) wheat lines containing different alleles of resistance genes including YR, LR, SR and FHB-resistant genes and then employed the Kompetitive allele specific PCR (KASP) genotyping assay to identify a single, homozygous wheat line stacking multiple disease resistance genes.

Contrary to conventional selective breeding which requires significant investments of labour and time, the KASP assay allows for the time and cost-effective selection of individuals carrying multiple homozygous disease-resistant gene alleles.

The ultimate goal of this study is to generate pre-breeding wheat lines harboring multiple wheat disease resistance genes. These lines will be readily used as novel sources by Canadian wheat breeders and will facilitate the introgression of numerous fungal resistance genes in CMRS wheat cultivars.