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Review
. 2024 Dec 13:15:1516317.
doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1516317. eCollection 2024.

Broad-spectrum resistance to fungal foliar diseases in wheat: recent efforts and achievements

Amira M I Mourad  1   2 , Asmaa A M Ahmed  3 , P Stephen Baenziger  4 , Andreas Börner  1 , Ahmed Sallam  1   3
Affiliations
Review

Broad-spectrum resistance to fungal foliar diseases in wheat: recent efforts and achievements

Amira M I Mourad et al. Front Plant Sci. .

Abstract

Wheat (Triticum spp.) is one of the most important cereal crops in the world. Several diseases affect wheat production and can cause 20-80% yield loss annually. Out of these diseases, stripe rust, also known as yellow rust (Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici), stem rust (Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici), leaf rust (Puccinia recondita), and powdery mildew (Blumeria graminis f. sp. tritici) are the most important fungal diseases that infect the foliar part of the plant. Many efforts were made to improve wheat resistance to these diseases. Due to the continuous advancement in sequencing methods and genomic tools, genome-wide association study has become available worldwide. This analysis enabled wheat breeders to detect genomic regions controlling the resistance in specific countries. In this review, molecular markers significantly associated with the resistance of the mentioned foliar diseases in the last five years were reviewed. Common markers that control broad-spectrum resistance in different countries were identified. Furthermore, common genes controlling the resistance of more than one of these foliar diseases were identified. The importance of these genes, their functional annotation, and the potential for gene enrichment are discussed. This review will be valuable to wheat breeders in producing genotypes with broad-spectrum resistance by applying genomic selection for the target common markers and associated genes.

Keywords: functional annotation; gene enrichment; genome-wide association study; wheat leaf rust; wheat powdery mildew; wheat stem rust; wheat stripe rust.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The author(s) declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Graphical presentation showing (A) the usefulness of testing the LD between GWAS results and specific DNA markers for diease resistance to design KASP markers, (B) LD between Xcfd43 (Sr6) and SNP markers lcoated on 2D chromosome (Mourad et al 2018b), and (C) LD between VENTRUIPLN (Sr38) and SNP markers located on 2A chromosome (Eltaher et al., 2021).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Number of GWAS studies carried out for wheat powdery mildew (WPM), wheat leaf rust (WLR), wheat yellow rust (WYR), and wheat stem rust (WSR) in different growth stages of wheat life cycles.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Number of GWAS studies carried out for; (A) wheat yellow rust (WYR), (B) wheat leaf rust (WLR), (C) wheat stem rust (WSR) and (D) wheat powdery mildew (WPM) in different countries of the world.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Distribution of common gene models associated with each studied foliar disease among different regions around the world, (A) number of markers associated with each disease in each chromosome, (B) distribution of significant markers associated with each disease in each wheat genome, and (C) chromosomal position of gene models harboring these common significant markers.
Figure 5
Figure 5
WYR biological process network.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Number of significant markers associated with the resistance of the four studied foliar diseases from 2019 to 2023.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Distribution of common gene models associated with more than one foliar disease; (A) number of gene models in each chromosome, (B) distribution of these gene models each wheat genome, and (C) chromosomal position of gene models.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Gene enrichment of the identified gene models associated with WPM and at least one of rust disease based on the biological process (FDR = 1%).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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