The long-term goal of the project is to map and characterize genes controlling economically important traits and facilitate their transfer in an applied breeding context.
Diseases can seriously reduce both the yield and quality of barley produced.
One of the most effective and environmentally sound means of controlling these diseases is through the deployment of resistant cultivars. In addition to mapping disease resistance genes, the project is developing cost-effective marker technology that will facilitate the rapid and efficient selection of genotypes with multiple disease resistance in segregating breeding populations. Research of a more basic nature is being advanced toward the cloning of a durable stem rust resistance gene. The successful completion of this objective will facilitate the identification and isolation of other resistance genes in cereal crops. Efforts to combine high levels of resistance to both diseases have been unsuccessful in the past using conventional methods.