Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Ramularia leaf spot, caused by the fungus Ramularia collo-cygni, has spread rapidly to become a major disease of barley in Britain and many other parts of Europe. It was first recognised in the UK in 1998 and is now important in Scotland, especially on spring barley, and is spreading into winter barley in England. The rapid, recent increase in its importance means it is poorly understood in terms of scientific understanding of the disease and the pathogen, methods of crop disease management are currently limited to fungicide applications and breeding of barley varieties for resistance to Ramularia is in its infancy. There is thus both a pressing need to understand the disease and an exciting opportunity for research to combat it. This LINK project will take an integrated approach to developing methods to controlling Ramularia which will remain robust despite rapid changes in the environment and farming systems. This will help to support production of barley, the UK's second most important crop, in a way which is economically and environmentally sustainable despite an increasingly variable climate. For control of Ramularia in the short term (up to 5 years), we will develop a forecasting system to increase the precision of fungicide applications and thus to minimise the volume of active ingredients applied to barley crops to control Ramularia. For the medium term (up to 10 years), our research will aim to break the chain of transmission of the disease by reducing contamination of barley seed stocks, partly through improved methods of identifying contamination and partly by improvements in seed treatments. For the longer term, our research will support the efforts of barley breeders to select barley varieties which are suitable for UK markets and are not susceptible to Ramularia. We will do this partly by research on the genetics of resistance, by identifying varieties which have different genes for Ramularia resistance and can thus be crossed to produce barley lines with better resistance than their parents, and partly by improving methods of selecting barley varieties with resistance to Ramularia. This research will be underpinned by advances in knowledge of the biology of the disease, unravelling the complex interactions between physical stress, toxins produced by the fungus and the resistance of barley varieties to the fungus. Advances made by this project will give barley growers the ability to control Ramularia using well-timed applications of effective fungicides, the seed trade the opportunity to reduce the spread of the disease by minimising fungal contamination of barley seed and plant breeders the opportunity of producing barley varieties with resistance to Ramularia.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

A harvested wheat crop is normally assessed for several quality attributes that influence the ability of its flour to make bread and also affect the money paid to farmers by millers. One such parameter is called Hagberg Falling Number (HFN) which is an indirect measure of the properties that a loaf of bread will have. For example, wheat with low HFN will produce bread that is very difficult to slice because of sticky crumb. Therefore, millers and other end-users avoid buying wheat grain that has a HFN value below a fixed number. Low HFN wheat impacts negatively on the environment as it produces wastage and inefficient use of resources. Unlike other problems in wheat which can be corrected by agronomic practices or through disease management, HFN is heavily influenced by the environment and cannot be easily improved by these means. This is especially relevant in the UK environment as cold and wet periods during the summer are thought to reduce HFN. Therefore, the most effective and reliable way for a farmer to grow high HFN wheat is proper varietal selection. Unfortunately, it is very difficult for breeders to develop high HFN varieties due to lack of knowledge of the genes, or regions throughout the genome, which might influence HFN. Through a previously funded Defra-BBSRC project we have made important progress in understanding the variation for HFN in UK wheat varieties and have taken a first step to discovering the regions of the genome that affect this trait. Despite these encouraging results, we are still short in developing the tools that breeders require to transfer this knowledge into improved commercial wheat varieties. This projects seeks to address this limitation by developing a 'breeder's tool kit' that will assist towards this end. We have selected six regions of the wheat genome which we know are affecting HFN based on experiments conducted in the previous project. We will now hone in and develop more precise information of these regions. This will result in better defined genetic maps which breeders can use to navigate the wheat genome and focus their breeding efforts more effectively in those locations that contain genes affecting HFN. We will investigate how these regions affect agronomic traits which are of interests to breeders and farmers; such as yield and other quality characteristics. We will also combine the six regions in different combinations to better understand how they work together and if we can produce more resilient varieties that will have high HFN values independent of the weather conditions. We will also investigate the basic biology of how these regions affect HFN. Together, this information will enable UK plant breeders to develop new, more competitive varieties of wheat with reduced environmental footprint and more consistent grain quality.