Source: CropBiotech Update

Crown rot of wheat is caused by the pathogen Fusarium pseudograminearum. Infected crowns appear brown and rot to a greater or lesser extent depending on the stage of the disease and on the severity of the infection. Plants with severe infections generally do not survive, and F. pseudograminearum persists in the soil in infected plant matter, representing a chronic source of infection in affected fields.

Crown rot is mainly managed by controlling grass hosts prior to cropping, rotating susceptible cereals with non-host break crops, burning infected stubble, and selecting tolerant wheat varieties. Tolerance, however, refers to the ability of a plant to withstand infection, while resistance describes the ability of a host to resist or prevent infection by a pathogen, with minimal damage to the plant tissues. Resistant plants will also reduce the number of spores the pathogen is able to produce, minimizing the risks for future crops. The isolation of wheat varieties with genetic resistance to crown rot is therefore essential for controlling the disease.

Mittera and co-workers in the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Plant Industry, the University of Ballarat in Australia, and the Hebei Academy of Agricultural Sciences of China, report on the development of a new high-throughput and reliable seedling bioassay to screen wheat germplasm for crown rot resistance in the Plant Pathology scientific journal . Single wheat seedlings were inoculated with Fusarium and assessed for crown rot severity after an incubation period of 35 days. The seedling bioassay mimicked field resistance to crown rot in adult plants, and by detecting small but consistent differences in crown rot severity among different wheat cultivars, the bioassay proved an effective tool for large-scale screening for partial resistance.
Read the abstract of “

A high-throughput glasshouse bioassay to detect crown rot resistance in wheat germplasm
V. Mitter, M. C. Zhang, C. J. Liu, R. Ghosh, M. Ghosh and S. Chakraborty
Abstract: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-3059.2006.01384.x