Defeating BYDV: Innovating barley varieties for crop resilience
Project name
BYDV screening of NVT lines at Manjimup
GRDC Code
WAA1905-001SAX
Advancing barley varieties for resilience
Every year Barley Yellow Dwarf Virus (BYDV) causes significant losses in cereal crops in the south coastal region of Western Australia (WA), mainly barley, wheat, rye, oat and maize.
Symptoms mainly appear as yellowing/reddening of leaves and cause many agronomical, biochemical, physiological, and ultrastructural changes.
These losses have been known to occur in high rainfall wheatbelt areas of WA.
Although field management practices, such as modifying the sowing date to avoid diseases and applying insecticides to control aphid populations are effective in limiting the spread of these issues, breeding and growing resistant varieties remain the most promising environment-friendly and economic approach to address the challenge.
The project develops information to determine the response of lines in the National Variety Trial (NVT) program to BYDV in high-risk zone and identify resistance genes effective against this disease.
This knowledge for immediate use by growers is the ranking of current barley varieties for resistance (tolerance) to BYDV.
This data is routinely presented in variety sowing guides, to help farmers to make informed choices for the varieties they grow.
Assessing BYDV tolerance in different locations
This trial began in May 2023, comprising of test lines and buffers.
Entries were randomised with a row-column design using 2 plots per row and there were 160 plots in total.
The trial has been hand planted, while a cone seeder run of Dalyup oats is to act as an infection source.
Each plot has a strip of oats along one of its sides.
Replicates will be split into 2 “blocks” (with runs of oats) in between the blocks.
Both plot lengths and pathway include space for an oat buffer on either side.
In this study, two locations were looked at, each differing in field climate and aphid prevalence to achieve a more reliable assessment of BYDV tolerance.
Although the plants in Tasmanian trials were artificially inoculated, higher degree of disease severity and disease incidence was observed in Western Australia.
An increased number of aphids was associated with higher rate of infection.
Additional experiments
Apart from BYDV screening in the NVT program, a research study was undertaken in collaboration with Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture Research.
Australian varieties have been classified into intermediate to susceptible categories to BYDV in the NVT program. No variety is classified as resistant.
In a separate study, the parental varieties showed moderate levels of resistance to BYDV.
The frequency distribution of BYDV symptoms scored based on leaf yellowing showed that the phenotype in the WA trials basically followed nearly normal distribution.
The population sown in WA developed more severe symptoms overall than other national trials, including in Tasmania.
Both genotype and environment (sowing time and location) showed significant effects on symptom scores for the Double Haploid lines with the effect of genotype being more significant than environment.
The major pre-breeding outputs include mapping of resistance genes (3H, 5H and 7H), these are currently being utilised in breeding programs across Australia.
Funding partners / project collaborators
Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) NVT trials
Contact
Sanjiv Gupta
DPIRD/Murdoch University Associate Professor
E: S.Gupta@murdoch.edu.au/Sanjiv.Gupta@dpird.wa.gov.au
P: (08) 9368 3622