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Promising Research Reported on Crown Rust
Published Friday, February 05, 2010 at 04:53 AM
Agricultural Research Service scientists are tapping into the DNA of a wild oat, considered by some to be a noxious weed, to see if it can help combat crown rust, the most damaging fungal disease of oats worldwide. Crown rust reduces oat yields up to 40 percent and shows a remarkable ability to adapt to varieties bred to genetically resist it. Analysis by Martin Carson, research leader at the ARS Cereal Disease Laboratory in St. Paul, Minnesota, show crown rust is increasing in virulence throughout North America. Carson says crown rust is caused by Puccinia coronata, a fungus that reproduces both sexually and asexually and has enough genetic flexibility to overcome resistance genes, usually in about five years. A Carson led team of researchers has inserted individual resistance genes into oat varieties that produce proteins believed to recognize strains of crown rust and trigger a defense response against them. Researchers found a wild oat variety, Avena barbata, has new genes with effective resistance. The slender oat, listed as a noxious weed in Missouri and classified as moderately invasive in California, grows wild in South Asia, much of Europe and around the Mediterranean region.

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