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Wheat Information Service
Number 82: 33-35 (1996)
Research Information

Development of rust resistant wheat lines using Sr31, Lr26 and Yr9 genes

R.N. Brahma, M.Sivasamy and Aloka Saikia

Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Regional Station, Wellington 643231, Tamil Nadu, India


Presently no wheat varieties released in India is resistant to all the three rusts of wheat viz, stem (Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici. ), leaf (Puccinia recondita f. sp. tritici.) and stripe (Puccinia striiformis) under Wellington conditions. Efforts were made to develop wheat lines with durable resistance suitable for southern hills of India comprising Nilgiri and Palani hills. Development of a resistant line to all the three rusts is a hard task particularly in the absence of durable resistance genes for different rusts and the difficulties in while incorporating all these components in a single line without having any adverse effect on yield and quality. Hence, an effort was made to develop such varieties by crossing wheat cultivars HD 2380 and VL 616 susceptible to all the three rusts with MACS 2496 resistant to stem and stripe rusts.
The cultivars HD 2380 and VL 616 were individually crossed with MACS 2496. The resistant F
1 hybrids were backcrossed to recurrent parents and lines showing resistance to stem, leaf and stripe rusts were selected and constituted after 3rd successive backcrosses followed by repeated selfing. The resultant lines were extensively tested, for five generations, for possession of resistance to all the three rusts under natural epiphytotic conditions at Wellington.

The resultant lines showed resistance to stem and stripe rust and moderately resistance to brown rust (
Table 1). The donor parent MACS 2496 carrying Lr1, Lr23, Lr26, unknown Lr genes and Sr31 and Yr9 showed high degree of resistance to stem and stripe rust. The genes, Sr31 and Yr9 offer high degree of resistance against the prevailing races of rusts in India (Sawhney 1985 ; Gupta 1985). Tomar et al. (1985) reported the effectiveness of Yr9 against the prevailing races at Wellington. The variety HD 2380 carries specific genes Lr13, Lr14a, Lr23 and Sr30 and VL 616 carries Lr14a and YrA (Sawhney 1994). The resistance to stem and stripe rust in MACS 2496 is controlled by dominant genes Sr31 and Yr9, respectively and since all the F1 hybrids showed resistance to both stem and stripe rusts, it confirms that the transfer of these genes has occurred. However, the varieties HD 2380, VL 616 and MACS 2496 were susceptible to leaf rust (Table 1). Surprisingly, the constituted lines showed the susceptible reaction at seedling stage while it showed moderately resistance to leaf rust at adult stage. This may be due to the presence of Lr13, Lr14a and some unknown genes in HD 2380 and Lr14a in VL 616 which are known to be associated with adult plant resistance. Browder (1981) observed that Lr12, Lr13, Lr14a and Lr22a are only adult plant resistance genes. Moreover Lr13 is known to be highly interactive with other genes, and this might have resulted in the adult plant resistance in the new lines constituted. Gupta (1985) reported that the gene Lr13 is highly interactive and it appears that some other unknown gene either alone or in combination with Lr13 confers adult plant resistance. Similarly Samborski and Dyck (1982) also observed that Lr13 is a highly interactive gene and its resistance can be enhanced by Lr16 in cultivar Neepawa and Lr30 in cultivar Columbus.

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