Plant & Animal Genomes XV Conference

January 13-17, 2007
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Wild Barley Diversity Collection: A Germplasm Resource For Mining Useful Alleles For Cultivated Barley Improvement

Brian J. Steffenson¹ , Joy K. Roy¹ , Kevin P. Smith² , Gary Muehlbauer² , Jan Valkoun³ , Amor Yahyaoui³ , Michael Baum³ , Stefania Grando³

¹  Dept. of Plant Pathology, University of Minnesota, 1991 Upper Buford Circle, St. Paul, MN 55108, USA

²  Dept. of Agronomy and Plant Genetics, 1991 Upper Buford Circle, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, USA

³  International Center for Agriculture in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) Aleppo, Syria

Wild barley (Hordeum vulgare subsp. spontaneum) is a rich source of diverse alleles for cultivated barley improvement. To capture and exploit as much diversity as possible from the wild species, a collection of 318 accessions from the Fertile Crescent, Central Asia, and North Africa was assembled to form the Wild Barley Diversity Collection (WBDC). The WBDC was systematically evaluated for resistance to six barley diseases (stem rust, leaf rust, spot blotch, net blotch, powdery mildew and Septoria speckled leaf blotch) and 25 agronomic/morphological traits. Frequency of disease resistant accessions ranged from 8.1% for stem rust to 91.3% for net blotch. Several accessions carrying high levels of resistance to all six diseases were identified. The WBDC has been genotyped with 50 SSR and 1090 DArT markers, with 3,000 additional SNP markers to follow. Association mapping studies are being conducted using the extensive phenotypic and genotypic datasets. Validation of association mapping will be conducted in several genetic populations between wild and cultivated barley accessions. These data will provide valuable new information on the feasibility of using association genetics to position loci controlling economically important traits in a wild crop progenitor.