Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat

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• Background and Rationale
• Objective 1. Planning for the Threat of Emerging Wheat Rust Variants
• Objective 2. Advocating and Coordinating Global Awareness and Cooperation
• Objective 3. Tracking Wheat Rust Pathogens
• Objective 4. Support for Critical Rust Screening Facilities in East Africa
• Objective 5. Breeding (Conventional and Molecular) to Produce Rust Resistant Wheat Varieties
• Objective 6. Developing and Optimizing Markers for Rust Resistance
• Objective 7. Reducing Linkage Drag Associated with Rust Resistance Genes
• Objective 8. Discovering New Sources of Rust Resistance in Wild Wheat and Wild Barley
• Objective 9. Exploring Rice Immunity to Rust
• Objective 10. Project Management

Project Objectives

Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat

Contact: Ronnie Coffman, Principal Investigator (wrc2@cornell.edu), and Rick Ward, Project Coordinator (rward@cornell.edu)
International Programs, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
34 Warren Hall, Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-7801 (USA)
Telephone: (607) 255-3035 Fax: (607) 255-1005

Charitable Purpose

To systematically reduce the world's vulnerability to rust diseases of wheat through an international collaboration of unprecedented scale and scope.

Introduction

Virulent on most of the world’s deployed wheat varieties, a new race of wheat stem rust, designated as Ug99, threatens global food security. At the request of Dr. N.E. Borlaug, in March of last year Cornell University assembled world experts in Cd. Obregon, Mexico, to consider the feasibility of rendering wheat a non-host to stem rust by exploiting recent advances in functional and comparative genomics. The immunity of rice to rust drives this notion. Participants endorsed engagement in the long-term research goal of ending the wheat-rust arms race through engineered non-host resistance (NHR). Participants also recognized the potential and essential need for immediate impact through expanded investments in the scale and coordination of the applied, conventional breeding and seed sector efforts promoted by the Global Rust Initiative (now known as the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative [hotlink to globalrust.org]) established by CIMMYT, ICARDA, FAO, USDA-ARS and Cornell University as an outcome of the May 2005 assessment (see Recommendation #10) of race Ug99 in Kenya and Ethiopia and the potential for impact in neighboring regions and beyond.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation encouraged Cornell to translate these conclusions into a comprehensive proposal seeking solutions to the threat of Ug99 through research investments in both conventional breeding and non-host resistance. A subsequent iterative process involving the Foundation, Cornell, and numerous national and international institutions in both the developed and developing world resolved a set of revised Project Objectives with primary emphasis on expanding the scope, scale, and coordination of the activities that would result in the world’s farmers sowing wheat varieties with durable resistances to stem and other rusts.

This Project comprises a set of Activities within seven science Objectives that will strengthen and expand current capacities to create developing country-targeted conventional wheat varieties with rust resistance bred to be durable over space and time.

A significant outcome of this process was recognition that the world’s inability to conduct a coordinated defense against Ug99 reflects a strategic shortfall in planning, investments and policies in both national and international spheres. Accordingly, this project contains an Objective for advocating and coordinating global awareness and cooperation with the aim of expanding engagement and investments by multiple stakeholders in an effective, coordinated response to stem rust of wheat. The Project aims to facilitate the transition of the Global Rust Initiative into the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative and enable that body to serve as an overarching umbrella through which rational, integrated, and appropriately funded global rust research is achieved.

The Project described here has a three-year timeframe and includes a two-year Planning Objective designed to facilitate development of a more inclusive project (Phase II) to begin in 2010. The Activities in the Planning and Advocacy Objectives, running parallel to significant investments ramping up international breeding efforts (and initial engagement in NHR), will enable development of a Phase II Project with strengthened impact pathways (e.g., accelerated seed replacement systems for resource poor farmers), coordination, and NARS participation. The Planning and Advocacy Activities will also facilitate identification of the best science and engage the best scientists in the Project.

Project Objectives

It is important to pursue short-term goals that will achieve the rapid replacement of Ug99 susceptible wheat with resistant wheat. This means accelerated deployment of the small number of varieties already identified as possessing putative durable resistance (two or more major genes or minor-gene-based APR). For the medium term, the genetic diversity of effective durable resistances needs to be broadened to ensure avoidance of the boom-and-bust cycle inherent in reliance on only a few sources of resistance. Rice is the only cultivated cereal that is immune to the entire taxon of rust fungi. With advances in the area of genomics and molecular biology, technology now exists that allows for the identification of the genetic components responsible for the resistance. Gene transfer technology in both wheat and rice has advanced to the point where transferring this resistance trait from rice to wheat is feasible. Thus, the long-term research goal of this project is to identify and transfer non-host resistance genes from rice to wheat to achieve immunity to rusts in wheat.