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<p>Project 1 - Variety Development, Selection, and Characterization of Resistance to FHB and DON in Winter Barley: Provide growers and end users with superior feed and malt barley cultivars that are adapted to the eastern U.S. and have high yields, desirable quality, and disease resistance especially to FHB.</p><p>Project 2 - Improving FHB Resistance in SRW Wheat via Integrated Mapping, Phenotypic and MAS: Extensive and collaborative phenotypic and genotypic characterization of FHB resistance in elite breeding lines, commercial cultivars, and mapping populations is needed to generate reliable information on the type, effectiveness and diversity of FHB resistance, and to facilitate marker assisted selection (MAS) and pyramiding of complementary FHB resistance genes.</p><p>Project 3 - Developing Doubled Haploids to Expedite Variety Development in SRWW: Develop cultivars and readily available superior parental lines having gene Fhb1 and other validated QTL derived from exotic and native resistance sources.</p>
<p>Project 1: Molecular markers previously identified in known resistance sources will be used to haplotype parents and progeny and to enrich breeding populations. Heads selected from F4 and higher generation populations having FHB resistance parents will be screened with molecular markers in our lab and evaluated in headrow nurseries to identify desirable FHB resistant pure lines. Superior lines will be evaluated and advanced sequentially in replicated preliminary, advance, state, and regional trials as well as in FHB nursery tests prior to release.</p><p>Project 2: Research will focus on enhanced MAS breeding efforts in selection of parents, designing crosses, gene introgression and pyramiding, population enrichment, and selection of pure lines. Progeny selected from two male sterile recurrent selection populations, initially developed at Ohio State University and subsequently advanced at Virginia Tech to enhance FHB resistance in SRW wheat will be evaluated in observation yield tests and subsequently in replicated yield tests.</p><p>Project 3: Doubled haploids (DH) allow quick introgression of resistance genes and can significantly shorten variety development time. We plan to expand the use of this technique for the whole Southern SRWW region by the coordinated development of at least five breeding populations per year through DH production followed by collaborative genotyping and phenotyping across the region once the DH lines are developed and seed is increased for testing.</p>