Genetic and molecular analyses of resistance to a variant of Puccinia striiformis in barley

Seedlings of 62 Australian barley cultivars and two exotic barley genotypes were assessed for resistance to a variant of Puccinia striiformis, referred to as “Barley Grass Stripe Rust” (BGYR), first detected in Australia in 1998, which is capable of infecting wild Hordeum species and some genotypes of cultivated barley. Fifty-three out of 62 cultivated barley cultivars tested were resistant to the pathogen. Genetic analyses of seedling resistance to BGYR in six Australian barley cultivars and one Algerian barley landrace indicated that they carried either one or two major resistance genes to the pathogen. A single recessive seedling resistance gene, rpsSa3771, identified in Sahara 3771, was located on the long arm of chromosome 1 (7 H), flanked by the restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) markers Xwg420 and Xcdo347 at genetic distances of 12.8 and 21.9 cM, respectively. Mapping resistance to BGYR at adult plant growth stages using the doubled haploid (DH) population Clipper × Sahara 3771 identified two major quantitative trait loci (QTL), one on the long arm of chromosome 3 (3 H) and the second on the long arm of chromosome 1 (7 H), accounting for 26 % and 18 % of the total phenotypic variation, respectively. The QTL located on chromosome 7HL corresponded to seedling resistance gene rpsSa3771 and the second QTL was concluded to correspond to a single APR gene, designated rpsCl, contributed by cultivar Clipper.