title: Genetic architecture of resistance to Septoria tritici blotch in European wheat.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Septoria tritici blotch is an important leaf disease of European winter wheat. In our survey, we analyzed Septoria tritici blotch resistance in field trials with a large population of 1,055 elite hybrids and their 87 parental lines. Entries were fingerprinted with the 9 k SNP array. The accuracy of prediction of Septoria tritici blotch resistance achieved with different genome-wide mapping approaches was evaluated based on robust cross validation scenarios.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Septoria tritici blotch disease severities were normally distributed, with genotypic variation being significantly (P < 0.01) larger than zero. The cross validation study revealed an absence of large effect QTL for additive and dominance effects. Application of genomic selection approaches particularly designed to tackle complex agronomic traits allowed to double the accuracy of prediction of Septoria tritici blotch resistance compared to calculation methods suited to detect QTL with large effects.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our study revealed that Septoria tritici blotch resistance in European winter wheat is controlled by multiple loci with small effect size. This suggests that the currently achieved level of resistance in this collection is likely to be durable, as involvement of a high number of genes in a resistance trait reduces the risk of the resistance to be overcome by specific pathogen isolates or races.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cytogenetics and Genome Analysis, Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), Gatersleben, Germany. reif@ipk-gatersleben.de.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Miedaner
authors.forename: Yusheng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Manje
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gowda
authors.forename: C Friedrich H
authors.initials: CF
authors.lastname: Longin
authors.forename: Viktor
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Korzun
authors.forename: Erhard
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ebmeyer
authors.forename: Ebrahim
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Kazman
authors.forename: Jochen C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Reif
mesh_terms: D001203:Ascomycota / Q000276:immunology*; D003433:Crosses, Genetic; D060467:Disease Resistance / Q000235:genetics*; D056726:Genetic Association Studies; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D005838:Genotype; D010641:Phenotype; D010935:Plant Diseases / Q000235:genetics* / Q000276:immunology; D018515:Plant Leaves / Q000235:genetics / Q000276:immunology / Q000382:microbiology; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D019655:Quantitative Trait, Heritable; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014908:Triticum / Q000235:genetics* / Q000276:immunology* / Q000382:microbiology