Of Australia’s $170 million per annum battle with necrotrophic plant pathogens, septoria tritici and nodorum blotch loom as the greatest wheat threats, where they can cramp yields by up to 50 per cent.

Their climatic preferences combine to include Western Australia’s cooler and warmer areas, allowing them to interfere with plant development and grain filling across most growing areas.

To tackle the greatest fungal disease facing wheat growers, the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) supported Department of Agriculture Plant Pathologist, Robert Loughman and Molecular Geneticist, Michael Francki to investigate new strategies to introduce resistance to existing high yielding, high quality Western Australian wheat varieties.

"We have begun genetic analysis of wheat chromosomes for resistance to septoria nodorum blotch," Dr Francki explained.

"We expect to identify molecular markers linked to the genes which underpin resistance to nodorum and tritici. Breeding programs can then use these probes to more readily transfer resistance into high performing Western Australian wheat cultivars to help them yield well despite disease presence."

"We’re analysing a wheat doubled haploid population developed by the Department for sources of genetic resistance."

With support from growers and the Federal Government through the GRDC, the project will collaborate with international partners in the USA and the United Kingdom to genetically define resistance to these diseases.

At Purdue University (USA), resident Professor, Herb Ohm has developed a wheat breeding population to determine the genetic control of septoria nodorum blotch resistance, which can also be used to target useful resistance genes for Western Australian varieties.

At the John Innes Centre (UK) Dr James Brown will apply similar strategies to identify and genetically define broadly useful septoria tritici blotch resistance.

Meanwhile, molecular marker work at the Department of Agriculture and the Value Added Wheat CRC will concentrate on strategies to integrate the desired genetic traits into Western Australia adapted varieties without inadvertently bringing unwanted genes which could compromise grain quality.

"Molecular marker technology allows us to be more precise about the genes we target and combine into new varieties," Dr Francki enthused.