LAWRENCE, Kan. (DTN) — Kansas State researchers have assembled all the ingredients needed to produce a wheat line that could give farmers protection against the wheat curl mite and two of the damaging wheat diseases it carries.
A team of researchers from the university has isolated three distinct lines of wheat that have resistance to the mite, wheat streak mosaic virus and High Plains virus, Kansas State entomologist Mike Smith told DTN.
Later this year, Kansas State wheat breeder Allan Fritz will make crosses from these lines and submit them to Heartland Plant Innovations (HPI), a plant biotechnology company. HPI will use doubled haploid breeding on the lines, a faster breeding technique that allows scientists to produce pure parent lines in only one generation.
The goal is to find a variety that can compete with commercial wheat lines for yield and quality, with the added bonus of resistance to the mites and the two viruses. Researchers hope to have the tri-resistant variety ready for farmers in three to five years, Smith said.
Fritz's crosses will be tested at a variety of locations around Kansas to see how they perform in the many varying soil types and environments of the state, Smith added.
Despite measuring in at less than a quarter of a millimeter, wheat curl mites do some impressive damage, primarily through the diseases they spread. Some studies have estimated that wheat streak mosaic virus alone reduces wheat yields in the Great Plains region by 5{75f28365482020b1dc6796c337e8ca3e58b9dd590dc88a265b514ff5f3f56c30} annually. Smith estimated Kansas wheat farmers lose between $20 million to $30 million a year to these viruses and mites.
The mites generally infest winter wheat in the spring by laying their eggs along the veins of the wheat leaves. As the leaves die and curl up (hence the pest's name), the mites move to freshly emerging leaves.
When winter wheat dries out completely, the mites bunch together, wait for a stiff breeze, and wind surf to their summer vacation spots, which is usually volunteer wheat or grasses. When those summer hosts dry up, the mites hop on to the next convenient gust for a ride to newly emerged winter wheat.
Pesticides have proven ineffective against the mites, so most management plans involve preventing the infestations by destroying volunteer wheat at least two weeks before planting winter wheat, picking non-susceptible varieties, and planting later in the fall.
For information on wheat curl mites and management practices to control them, see this Kansas State page: http://goo.gl/….
For more information on Kansas State's research into mite and disease resistant wheat, see the Kansas State press release: http://goo.gl/….
by Emily Unglesbee, DTN News Intern
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Posted with DTN Permission by Haylie Shipp
